Slum Boy

Scottish visual artist Diaz tracks his journey out of “the Glasgow slums” in his rousing debut autobiography. The author was born Juan McKelvie in 1977. At a young age, he was separated from his alcoholic birth parents and placed in the Scottish foster care system. After his father drowned, Diaz bounced between his mother and sometimes abusive foster families “so many times, with so many faces, so much confusion, that I have lost count.” He was eventually adopted by a couple who provided steady shelter but a contentious atmosphere, especially when his adoptive father found a teenage Diaz in bed with another boy and nearly threw him out of the house. All the while, Diaz nurtured an abiding love of art (“Art is a language and lifeline rooting me in the present as I process the past, layer by layer, stroke by stroke, making intelligible the chaos of experience and shaping meaning from all I have lived”). Here, he describes attending art school in Glasgow, exploring his budding gay identity, and navigating his complicated relationship with his biological and adoptive families. Vivid prose, novelistic pacing, and Diaz’s palpable passion for the creative life make this sing. It’s a remarkable self-portrait steeped in resiliency. (May)