Affliction

In 1937, at the age of nineteen, Ralph Hall, suicidal, revealed his sexual orientation to his grandmother, knowing she would comfort him. He was out for three years afterwards, until an indiscretion sent him back into the closet. At twenty-four, while in the army, he met and married Irene. The couple made their home on the San Francisco Peninsula and had four children. Ralph was an attentive husband and father—albeit with an intense interest in interior design, flower arranging, and fine objects—and a diligent worker who rose to payroll accountant at Standard Oil.

It wasn’t until 1975 that Ralph came out to his middle daughter, Laura, telling her that he had once considered his sexuality an aberration, an affliction. She was shocked, as the possibility her father might be gay had never crossed her mind. Irene had known Ralph’s secret for eighteen years, but the two remained married until she died. It was only then that this charismatic man and devoted father, by now in his eighties, could freely express his authentic, gay self.

Here, Laura paints a vivid and honest portrait of her beloved father and the effect his secret had on her own life.

Publication Date: July 13, 2021

Author: Laura Hall

Categories: Memoir, Spring 2021

Description
About the Author

Description

2024 BookFest Book Awards First Place Winner: Relationships – Family
2024 International Impact Book Awards Winner: Inspirational
2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner: LGBTQ+
2023 Best Book Awards Winner in Nonfiction: LGBTQ+
2023 American Writing Awards Winner in Nonfiction: LGBTQ+

“A deeply moving personal remembrance.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“This moving memoir is about not just a daughter, not just a father, but a whole family, one that’s impossible not to love. Hall’s writing is honest and insightful and her story a comfort and a gem.”
—Victoria Loustalot, author of This is How You Say Goodbye and Living Like Audrey: Life Lessons from the Fairest Lady of All

“This book shares a vital perspective that, until now, was missing from the LGBTQ community’s understanding of its own history. Hall finally adds the missing puzzle piece: the voice of the children of gay parents, a group that has long stood in the shadows. We are given a rare and precious gift as she warmly invites the reader into the world of her closeted family and shares a perspective that is deeply loving and raw in its honesty.”
—Robin Marquis, former national program director of COLAGE

“Affliction is a loving and tender portrait of a relationship and a family. It’s also an important addition to the history of gay parents in America and of the particular challenges faced by gay men and women in the years before Stonewall.”
—Alysia Abbott, author of Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father

“Affliction is one of the most moving and compelling books I’ve ever read. It reveals the bravery and the suffering of the gay men who hid their secrets and carried on. They married, often, and had children. Laura Hall is one of those children, and she wouldn’t trade her father for anybody’s.”
—Adair Lara, author of Naked, Drunk, and Writing and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle

“Laura’s book is one that will touch the heart of anyone who has dealt with coming out in a family setting.”
—Mark Segal, the nation’s most award-winning commentator in LGBTQ media and author of And Then I Danced

“Hall’s conversational tone and attention to the small details of home life, as well as to larger issues and emotions, make this a captivating and sympathetic family story. There are undoubtedly other families with queer parents who were out to their spouses but not to the outside world, but many such stories remain hidden. Thanks to Hall for sharing hers and reminding us not only of the long history of queer parents but also of the many ways that queer parents and our children have existed and survived, by choice or circumstance.”
—Dana Rudolph, publisher of the GLAAD Media Award–winning blog Mombian

About the Author

Laura Hall was born in a small city on the San Francisco Peninsula. A member of the post–World War II baby boom, she grew up in an era of hopeful optimism. After turning sixteen in 1967, just as the Summer of Love kicked off in San Francisco, she hung out with flower children in Haight-Ashbury, marched against the Vietnam War in Golden Gate Park, sang along to live counterculture music at the famed Fillmore Auditorium, and was pregnant by the time she was a senior in high school. When her daughter started college eighteen years later, so did Laura. After receiving her BA and MA in Landscape Architecture at University of California, Berkeley, she went on to teach for the school’s Extension program and build an urban design professional practice where her projects included community facilitation in northern California communities and rebuilding plans for Mississippi Gulf Coast towns after Hurricane Katrina. She currently works in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Tribal, Intergovernmental, and Policy Division in San Francisco.