Part memoir, part sweeping journalistic saga: As Casey Parks follows the mystery of a stranger's past, she is forced to reckon with her own sexuality, her fraught Southern identity, her tortured yet loving relationship with her mother, and the complicated role of faith in her life. "Most moving is Parks’s depiction of a queer lineage, her assertion of an ancestry of outcasts, a tapestry of fellow misfits into which the marginalized will always, for better or worse, fit." —The New York Times Book Review When Casey Parks came out as a lesbian in college back in 2002, she assumed her life in the South was over. Her mother shunned her, and her pastor asked God to kill her. But then Parks's grandmother, a stern conservative who grew up picking cotton, pulled her aside and revealed a startling secret. "I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man," and then implored Casey to find out what happened to him. Diary of a Misfit is the story of Parks's life-changing journey to unravel the mystery of Roy Hudgins, the small-town country singer from grandmother’s youth, all the while confronting ghosts of her own. For ten years, Parks traveled back to rural Louisiana and knocked on strangers’ doors, dug through nursing home records, and doggedly searched for Roy’s own diaries, trying to uncover what Roy was like as a person—what he felt; what he thought; and how he grappled with his sense of otherness. With an enormous heart and an unstinting sense of vulnerability, Parks writes about finding oneself through someone else’s story, and about forging connections across the gulfs that divide us.

Diary of a Misfit shares the daily battles of an eighth-grader as she endures trials and tribulations of surviving peer pressure, dealing with physical changes and balancing academics. It takes readers to the realities of a school girl's life, one who is christened as a social misfit by her peers. From dealing with school bullies, making one's life miserable, to the whirlwind puppy love encounters with the opposite sex, and all the way into finding the right people who share the same interests and hobbies, life as a teen or preteen is not at all a walk in the park.

Part memoir, part sweeping journalistic saga: As Casey Parks follows the mystery of a stranger's past, she is forced to reckon with her own sexuality, her fraught Southern identity, her tortured yet loving relationship with her mother, and the complicated role of faith in her life. "Most moving is Parks’s depiction of a queer lineage, her assertion of an ancestry of outcasts, a tapestry of fellow misfits into which the marginalized will always, for better or worse, fit." —The New York Times Book Review When Casey Parks came out as a lesbian in college back in 2002, she assumed her life in the South was over. Her mother shunned her, and her pastor asked God to kill her. But then Parks's grandmother, a stern conservative who grew up picking cotton, pulled her aside and revealed a startling secret. "I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man," and then implored Casey to find out what happened to him. Diary of a Misfit is the story of Parks's life-changing journey to unravel the mystery of Roy Hudgins, the small-town country singer from grandmother’s youth, all the while confronting ghosts of her own. For ten years, Parks traveled back to rural Louisiana and knocked on strangers’ doors, dug through nursing home records, and doggedly searched for Roy’s own diaries, trying to uncover what Roy was like as a person—what he felt; what he thought; and how he grappled with his sense of otherness. With an enormous heart and an unstinting sense of vulnerability, Parks writes about finding oneself through someone else’s story, and about forging connections across the gulfs that divide us.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I went home to help my grandmother with an old friend of mine, Roy, who ended up being an abusive asshole. I learned a lot about myself, and the fucked-up system we live under. #2 I was scared and my mom offered me cigarettes. I went inside and found my grandma smoking a cigarette. The only thing I knew about her childhood friend was that he had been abusive, but she did not let go of my hand. -> I went home to help my grandmother with an old friend of mine, Roy, who ended up being an abusive asshole. I learned a lot about myself and the fucked-up system we live under. #3 I went home to help my grandmother with an old friend of mine, Roy, who ended up being an abusive asshole. I learned a lot about myself and the fucked-up system we live under. #4 I went home to help my grandmother with an old friend of mine, who ended up being an abusive asshole. I learned a lot about myself and the fucked-up system we live under.

The book explores the author's life who was sent to boarding school at a tender age and had to shelter and take care of herself as she was all alone. It is about being a teenager and being able to make your own decisions; choices that won't rescind you.

Diary of a Misfit shares the daily battles of an eighth-grader as she endures trials and tribulations of surviving peer pressure, dealing with physical changes and balancing academics. It takes readers to the realities of a school girl's life, one who is christened as a social misfit by her peers. From dealing with school bullies, making one's life miserable, to the whirlwind puppy love encounters with the opposite sex, and all the way into finding the right people who share the same interests and hobbies, life as a teen or preteen is not at all a walk in the park.

Longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2020 Life's a drag... Why not be a queen? 'Stories like the one where you shagged a 79-year-old builder and knocked over his sister's ashes while feeding him a Viagra. Or the time you crashed your car because you were giving a hand job in barely moving traffic and took your eye off the car in front. That's the kind of dinner-party ice-breaker I'm talking about.' Northern, working-class and shagging men three times her age, Crystal writes candidly about her search for 'the one'; sleeping with a VIP in an attempt to become a world famous journalist; getting hired and fired by a well-known fashion magazine; being torn between losing weight and gorging on KFC; and her need for constant sexual satisfaction (and where that takes her). Charting her day-to-day adventures over the course of a year, we encounter tucks, twists and sucks, heinous overspending and endless nights spent sprinting from problem to problem in a full face of make-up. This is a place where the previously unspeakable becomes the commendable - a unique portrayal of the queer experience. (c) 2019, Crystal Rasmussen (P) 2019 Penguin Audio