Cynthia Carr

“[Fire in the Belly is] unimprovable as a biography-thorough, measured, beautifully written, loving but not uncritical-as a concentrated history of his times, and as a memorial.” -Luc Sante, Bookforum David Wojnarowicz was an abused child, a teen runaway who barely finished high school, but he emerged as one of the most important voices of his generation. He found his tribe in New York's East Village, a neighborhood noted in the 1970s and '80s for drugs, blight, and a burgeoning art scene. His creativity spilled out in paintings, photographs, films, texts, installations, and in his life and its recounting-creating a sort of mythos around himself. His circle of East Village artists moved into the national spotlight just as the AIDS plague began its devastating advance, and as right-wing culture warriors reared their heads. As Wojnarowicz's reputation as an artist grew, so did his reputation as an agitator-because he dealt so openly with his homosexuality, so angrily with his circumstances as a Person With AIDS, and so fiercely with his would-be censors. Fire in the Belly is the untold story of a polarizing figure at a pivotal moment in American culture-and one of the most highly acclaimed biographies of the year.

The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz

Fire in the Belly

“MONUMENTAL.” (The New Yorker) • “HEROIC.” (The New York Times Book Review ) • “THRILLING.” (Los Angeles Times) • “PRISMATIC.” (The Atlantic) Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography A Finalist for the the Los Angeles Times Book Prize A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, NBC New York, Kirkus Reviews, The Brooklyn Public Library A Must-Read: Nylon, The Minnesota Star Tribune, Ms., San Francisco Chronicle, The Bay Area Reporter, Town & Country, InsideHook, W From the acclaimed biographer Cynthia Carr, the first full portrait of the queer icon and Warhol superstar Candy Darling. You must always be yourself no matter what the price . . . Don’t dare destroy your passion for the sake of others. The Warhol superstar and transgender icon Candy Darling was glamour personified, but she was without a real place in the world. Growing up on Long Island, lonely and quiet and queer, she was enchanted by Hollywood starlets like Kim Novak. She found her turn in New York’s early Off-Off-Broadway theater scene, in Warhol’s films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and at the famed nightclub Max’s Kansas City. She inspired songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones. She became friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, borrowed a dress from Lauren Hutton, posed for Richard Avedon, and performed alongside Tennessee Williams in his own play. Yet Candy lived on the edge, relying on the kindness of strangers, friends, and her quietly devoted mother, sleeping on couches and in cheap hotel rooms, keeping a part of herself hidden. She wanted to be a star, but mostly she wanted to be loved. Her last diary entry was: “I shall try to be grateful for life . . . Cannot imagine who would want me.” Candy died at twenty-nine in 1974, just as conversations about gender and identity were beginning to enter the broader culture. She never knew it, but she changed the world. Brimming with all the fizz and wildness of New York in the 1960s and ’70s, this is the first biography of this extraordinary figure—an unintentional pioneer who became an icon. Cynthia Carr’s Candy Darling is packed with tales of luminaries, gossip, and meticulous research, laced with Candy’s words and her friends’ recollections, and signals Candy’s long-overdue return to the spotlight. Includes 16 pages of color photographs

Dreamer, Icon, Superstar

Candy Darling

Describes one of the most infamous lynchings in American history, which took place in August 1930 in the author's hometown of Marion, Indiana, drawing on archival sources and interviews with survivors to investigate the history of race relations in Marion, the events of the lynching, the role of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, and her own grandfather's possible involvement. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Cynthia Carr

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