Michael Walker's Blog
|
Works by
Alexander Renault |
|
This page is under construction. If you would like to expedite its completion, please write to us and we'll place a priority on it.
|
Alexander Renault is the pen name for a writer who has published in multiple genres. He has worked in the mental health and drug and alcohol fields for the past fifteen years. His erotica has appeared online at Mind Caviar, Ophelia’s Muse, Velvet Mafia, and Scarlet Letters. -- from Saints & Sinners
Walking Higher: Gay Men Write about the Death of Their Mothers (2004), Alexander Renault, ed.
Walking Higher is a tribute both to motherhood and to memory as it reaches across varying cultural boundaries in its honest exploration of the experience of loss and bereavement. Although focusing on the unique bond between mother and gay son, this collection is for everyone who has lost somebody he or she either chose to or was bound by duty to love and care for and who may even now be experiencing the loved one’s terminal illness.
Writers from all over the U.S. and Canada, and one from Ireland, are gathered in this anthology to pay homage to their late mothers. Walking Higher not only explores the pain of separation but also boldly confronts the universality of human loss and illness, existential angst, and questions regarding religious faith. Not necessarily a "politically correct" offering, this collection does not don rose-colored glasses in an attempt to sentimentalize death and dying. Many diverse issues are explored, including families dealing with alcoholism, emotional abandonment, mental illness, catastrophic illness, and some writers have experienced the death of their mothers at an incredibly young age and spent a good portion of the rest of their lives trying to understand the impact.
Walking Higher is not always a stroll through a rose garden because writers also explore the Sturm und Drang of both their internal struggles and clashes with family members. However, this collection also captures many of the special memories, the timeless adoration of the child for the mother, and never forgets to celebrate the power of maternal love and influence.
See also:
http://www.alexanderrenault.com/published.html for a list of Renault's published writings.