Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays

In this collection of 26 essays, the earliest published in 1989, Johnson (The Man Who Loved Birds) contemplates questions of identity, belonging, and belief. With a deft hand and trained ear for storytelling, he explores growing up Catholic in Kentucky, the complex nature of same-gender eros, and the desire to belong. His work is most poignant when he’s bearing witness to the plague years of the AIDS crisis and its effects on the social and artistic networks of so many LGBTQ people. In the collection’s most moving pieces, he reckons with grief after his lover dies of AIDS-related complications. “From understanding grows compassion; from compassion grows real, enduring, life-affirming change,” writes Johnson. These essays trust in the power of communication to build the capacity for change. (May)