This story is about a man who knew within the confines of his heart what was normal for him and didn’t let the prejudices of his age prevent him from finding love in its various forms.

But finding fulfillment was a much more tortuous road, as it is for us all.

Among the more moving parts of actor, cross-dresser, playwright, screenwriter, and voiceover artist Harvey Fierstein’s memoir are his remembrances of how people first greeted news of AIDS.

Not that it was a pandemic affecting the lives of millions of people, but that it came from queers who got what they deserved.

Not us but them.

I think the drive to tell these stories from an “us” perspective is what drove him, that we are people just like you. That there’s no reason to fear us and push us into society’s dark corners. That we also deserve respect.

His memoir shows why he indeed deserved the respect and love of his parents, and how he turned that sensibility into some of the most memorable theatre of his age. ( )

One thing for sure, the author can write. He has a way with a phrase, and can make even the most banal of stories sound like something different. The book is an easy read, though a lot of the names he was dropping early in the book were unfamiliar, since I have never been particularly up on the drag scene. As he got to his later careers, the names became more meaningful, not just the people but the works he was involved with. Many of them I've seen and enjoyed. Perhaps too much of the gay sex scene for me; that's one reason I so rarely read celebrity biographies, because sex is so central to so many and I'm just not that interested. This was an issue mostly in the earlier part of the book. Once he got to his later career, he talks a lot more about the acting, writing, and other things he was doing. There are some areas where his information is far from factual, but I suppose that's the thing with memoirs and autobiographies; it isn't about what's true, it's about what you think or remember. ( )

I have loved Harvey Fierstein since the first time a went to the cinema to see Torch Song Trilogy and am in awe of his humanity and ability to read people and emotion. This memoir is simply wonderful and filled with -- honesty, chattiness, creativity, and most of all LOVE! This is one more piece of evidence of his influence on society that has contributed to change in attitudes. You are a Hero and an uncreditable Human Harvey!

We know him as Arnold, Edna, Tevye, Albin and just plain Harvey. He has been a prominent part of American musical theater since the 1970s as a writer and a performer. He is the first openly gay actor to achieve such fame.

His memoir is a fun read. It is chatty and honest, conveying his achievements and his down times (alcoholism, depression, addiction to anonymous sex). The book is beautifully produced, with 62 intimate photos displayed throughout.

At age 70, his career is not over. We haven't heard the last from Harvey. ( )

This memoir was released at just the right time! It is raw, honest and inspiring. Lots of laughs!! Highly recommend. ( )

Personal, poignant, and unmistakeably in his own voice (and I’d really recommend listening to this in audiobook if you can), Harvey Fierstein’s memoir recounts his career and discusses what it was like to be a gay man coming of age in the New York of the ‘70s and living through the AIDS crisis of the ‘80s and ‘90s. There’s plenty of wit and dish here, and while Fierstein sometimes leaves the subject of an anecdote mercifully anonymous, others are named and shamed (Ginger Rogers, for instance, does not come across well here). But it’s not all frothy celebrity gossip. He is bluntly honest about his alcoholism, and while Fierstein’s recounting of how his parents accidentally found out he was gay is still clearly painful for him to tell, he does so with admirable honesty and clarity.

(A small side note, but I did find it very amusing that this quintessentially street-wise New Yorker still has not, a quarter of a century later, realised that he’d had his leg pulled by an Irish person. He briefly mentions a tour stop in Dublin in about 1995 or 1996, during which he asked for the location of the nearest gay bar. A local tells him that there isn’t one: Ireland had decriminalised homosexuality so long ago that all the bars were integrated. Fierstein muses that this shows just how far behind the U.S. was in some ways. … Except of course that Ireland only decriminalised homosexuality in 1993, and by the middle of the decade, the George (long may it reign) was heading into its second decade of existence in the heart of Dublin. Ireland now is in many ways more socially progressive than the U.S., but not then!) ( )