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Diary of a Misfit

A Memoir and a Mystery

Audiobook
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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Part memoir, part sweeping journalistic saga: As Casey Parks follows the mystery of a stranger's past, she is forced to reckon with her own sexuality, her fraught Southern identity, her tortured yet loving relationship with her mother, and the complicated role of faith in her life.
"Most moving is Parks’s depiction of a queer lineage, her assertion of an ancestry of outcasts, a tapestry of fellow misfits into which the marginalized will always, for better or worse, fit." —The New York Times Book Review

When Casey Parks came out as a lesbian in college back in 2002, she assumed her life in the South was over. Her mother shunned her, and her pastor asked God to kill her. But then Parks's grandmother, a stern conservative who grew up picking cotton, pulled her aside and revealed a startling secret. "I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man," and then implored Casey to find out what happened to him. Diary of a Misfit is the story of Parks's life-changing journey to unravel the mystery of Roy Hudgins, the small-town country singer from grandmother’s youth, all the while confronting ghosts of her own.
For ten years, Parks traveled back to rural Louisiana and knocked on strangers’ doors, dug through nursing home records, and doggedly searched for Roy’s own diaries, trying to uncover what Roy was like as a person—what he felt; what he thought; and how he grappled with his sense of otherness. With an enormous heart and an unstinting sense of vulnerability, Parks writes about finding oneself through someone else’s story, and about forging connections across the gulfs that divide us.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 18, 2022
      In this tantalizing blend of personal history and reportage, Washington Post reporter Parks seeks out the story of an enigmatic small-town country singer to reckon with her own fraught past. When, in 2002, Parks’s grandmother shared that she’d once been neighbors in the 1950s with “a woman who lived as a man” named Roy Hudgins, Parks pledged to find out what happened to him. As a college freshman in the South who’d recently faced rejection after coming out to her family—a confession met by a plea from her pastor for “God to kill me”—Parks writes, “I couldn’t believe there was a place where you could be different, and people would love and accept you.” Seven years later, she set off on a series of trips through rural Louisiana to interview people who had known Roy. As Parks uncovers the mystery surrounding Roy’s life and death, she attempts to reconcile her sexuality with the specters of the home she left behind, as well as her complicated relationship with her mother, an opioid addict who was “bright and joyous when she was off the nose spray, vacant and mean when she was on.” Out of this comes a brilliantly rendered and complex portrait of Southern life alongside a tender exploration of queer belonging. Parks’s writing is a marvel to witness.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Author Casey Parks narrates her blend of memoir and historical investigation with a journalist's precision, but the emotion that creeps into her voice reveals just how personal her story is. Parks spent almost 20 years researching Roy, a transgender man who lived in the same Southern town as her grandmother. As she interviews residents about his life, trying to piece together his story, she shares her own story of growing up queer in Louisiana and navigating a complicated relationship with her mother. The book drags at times, but Parks's brisk narration will keep listeners engaged. She lets everything she felt while working on the story--frustration, curiosity, sadness, excitement--come through in her voice, and it adds a welcome depth to the audiobook. L.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

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