The Death of Fred Astaire, livre ebook

Finalist for the 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Autobiography & Memoir category
As a child of the sixties, Leslie Lawrence knew she didn't want to duplicate her parents' lives, yet she never imagined she'd stray so far outside the lines of their—and her own—expectations.The Death of Fred Astaire opens with the story, both wrenching and funny, of how Lawrence says her goodbyes to the iconic images she's held since her youth; she then proceeds to bear a child and raise him with her lesbian partner. Some essays in this debut collection reflect on legacies Lawrence inherited from her Jewish family and culture. In others, she searches gamely for a rich, authentic life—a voice, a vocation, a community, even a "god" she can call her own.
Always a seeker, an adventurer resisting fear, Lawrence, a city girl, creates a summer home in the back woods of the "Live Free or Die" state. She attempts the flying trapeze and takes part in a cross-dressing workshop. Traveling alone to Morocco, she assists a veterinarian tending to an ailing donkey. Teaching in a vocational high school in Boston, she questions her methods and assumptions about race and class. With rare honesty, she confronts the complexities of motherhood, of caring for her ill partner, and of widowhood. In "Wonderlust," the collection's most ambitious piece, she explores the role of beauty and creativity in our spiritual lives, revealing how lifelong learning in dance, music, and the visual arts can make us all more alive even as we age.
Ranging widely in length, subject, and style, these personal essays place Lawrence among today's most vital writers of creative nonfiction. Her warmth and wisdom, her distinctive blend of humor and pathos, her reverence for what sustains us—food and family, community and beauty—all make this a book you'll want to share with those you love.
Acknowledgments
I.
The Death of Fred Astaire
Becoming Jennie
King for a Day
Fits and Starts: Notes on (Yet) Another Writer’s Beginnings
Karl Will Bring a Picnic
Dogs and Children
II.
Andee’s Fiftieth and the Way We Live Now
Yard Sale
Always Someone!
Swinging
The Third Hottest Pepper in Honduras
III.
On the Mowing
Enough Tupperware
Provincetown Breakfast
My June Wedding IV.
What Can You Do?
Wonderlust: Excursions through an Aesthetic Education
1. Dancing Outside the Lines 2. Braking for Beauty
3. On Course(s)
4. A Want
5. Plank
6. Beauty, the Treacherous
7. Wired for Beauty?
8. A More Modest View of the Power of Teachers
9. Me and Georgia O’Keeffe
10. On Beauty and Justice and Becoming a Horse
11. The Good, the Bad, and the Pretty/Beautiful/Wild/Disgusting
12. Rediscovering the Goldbergs
13. Crisscrossing
14. How I Became an English Major
15. Consider the Float, the Glide, the Slash, Dab, Wring
16. Traveling in the Dark
17. Rooms to Dwell In
18. My Digital Age
19. Changing Course Course
20. My Story/Your Story
21. On Beauty and Dying
22. With Sam in Wonderland
23. Like Art, Like Life
At the Donkey Hotel
Selected Bibliography
Questions for Readers