Join Sheffield's feminist and queer bookshop Juno Books as they host a talk from William Lee Adams on Eurovision, a difficult childhood and finding your chosen family.
In his new memoir Wild Dances: My Queer and Curious Journey to Eurovision, the Vietnamese American journalist chronicles his life from a tough Southern US upbringing to becoming a celebrated London-based Eurovision pundit. He begins with his unconventional youth in rural Georgia as an effeminate boy saddled with a homophobic, pious family. Frighteningly embarrassed by his “slight lisp and high-pitched voice,” the author vividly describes his boyhood angst, trying “to hold my wrists straight, afraid of what the persistent bend and flop might signal.” At the same time, he fantasised about Burt Reynolds and considered Barbara Eden his muse. Adams also cared for his quadriplegic brother, monitored his bipolar Vietnamese mother, and voraciously studied encyclopedias.
Excelling in school, the author received a scholarship to Harvard, which catapulted him away from the claustrophobic dysfunction to the big city. There he began thriving as a gay man searching for true love and dreaming of a life in Europe.
"A revealing memoir about surviving childhood trauma to embrace the prismatic rainbow of chosen family" – Kirkus Reviews
