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Dot & Ralfie book cover

Dot & Ralfie

 

Dot & Ralfie is about a lesbian couple facing the physical, emotional, and relationship challenges of aging. Here's what people are saying about it:

 

"Amy Hoffman creates unforgettable characters, and her scintillating wit keeps things lively even in the face of the decline that awaits us all."—Alison Bechdel, author of The Secret to Superhuman Strength

 

"Dot & Ralfie is a shrewd examination of the many indignities of aging, economic inequality, and the broken healthcare system, all masked as an irresistible domestic comedy."—Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life

 

"We know Dot and Ralfie from back in the day in Boston! Was it at the bar? Dyke softball? Who can remember? Anyway, it's great to catch up with them—bum knees, chair stairs, crazy jobs, money worries, aging in place. In place of what? We loved spending time with them."—Kate Clinton, humorist, and Urvashi Vaid, activist

Release date: October 31, 2017 from University of Wisconsin Press

The Off Season

When Nora Griffin, an artist in her midthirties, moves from Brooklyn to Provincetown, she isn't looking for trouble. Her partner, Janelle, is recovering from breast cancer treatment, and together they've decided that the quiet off-season on the tip of Cape Cod is the perfect place for Janelle to heal and Nora to paint. Then charismatic Baby Harris flirts into Nora's life in her red cowboy boots.

Lies About My Family

An all-American coming-of-age story about a nice Jewish lesbian and her large family; from the eastern Europe migration to the present day.

I began writing LIES ABOUT MY FAMILY because I was wondering about the stories that families tell—the stereotyped ones that are told over and over. Why those stories? What’s underneath them? What’s missing? This led me to do research in the ship-manifest records at Ellis Island and other Internet and written sources, to interview with my parents and aunt, and to gather up our few remaining, scattered family records. LIES ABOUT MY FAMILY examines what I discovered about my history and my relationship to it all—my Jewish heritage, my lesbian identity, and my radical politics.

An Army of Ex-Lovers

Boston's weekly Gay Community News was “the center of the universe” during the late 1970s, writes Amy Hoffman in this memoir of gay liberation before AIDS, before gay weddings, and before The L Word.

Provocative, informative, inspiring, and absurd, with a small circulation but a huge influence, Gay Community News produced a generation of leaders, writers, and friends. In addition to capturing the heady atmosphere of the times—the victories, controversies, and tragedies—Hoffman's memoir is also her personal story, written with wit and insight, of growing up in a political movement; of her deepening relationships with charismatic, talented, and sometimes utterly weird coworkers; and of trying to explain it all to her large Jewish family.

Memoir / Gay and Lesbian Studies
192 pp., 30 illus.
$22.95 paper, ISBN 978-1-55849-621-7
$80.00 library cloth edition, ISBN 978-1-55849-620-0
November 2007

Hospital Time

Hospital Time is a memoir about friendship, family, and caregiving in the age of AIDS. Amy Hoffman chronicles with fury and unflinching honesty her experience serving as primary caretaker for her friend and colleague, Mike Riegle, who died from AIDS-related complications in 1992. Hoffman neither idealizes nor deifies Riegle, whom she portrays as a brilliant man, devoted prison rights activist, and very difficult friend.

Hoffman became central to Riegle’s caregiving when he asked her to be his health-care proxy, and although she willingly chose to do this, she explores her conflicting feelings about herself in this role and about her involvement with Riegle and his grueling struggle with hospitalization, illness, and, finally, death. She tells of the waves of grief that echoed throughout her life, awakening memories of other losses, entering her dreams and fantasies, and altering her relationships with friends, family, and even total strangers.

Hoffman’s memoir expresses the psychological and emotional havoc AIDS creates for those in the difficult role of caring for the terminally ill and it gives recognition to the role that lesbians continue to play in the AIDS emergency. A foreword by Urvashi Vaid, former executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, offers a meditation on the politics of AIDS and the role of family in the lives of lesbians and gay men.

ISBN 0-8223-1927-6
[ISBN13 978-0-8223-1927-6]
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Paperback - $19.95 ISBN 0-8223-1920-9
[ISBN13 978-0-8223-1920-7]