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Nightlight: A Memoir by Janine Avril

March 17th, 2008

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Nighlight: A Memoir by Janine Avil

Nightlight: A Memoir by Janine Avril

Alyson Books

$15.95

Official Site: http://www.janinesays.com/

by Bambi Weavil

Coming of age stories seem to have a certain backlight of secrecy within the narrator’s past or within their family, but I’ve never read anything that could quite compare to what Janine Avril went through in her childhood. Janine wrote a very compelling memoir on her life growing up in affluent Long Island with a family unit, devoted to secrecy and at the same time, fiercely to their children, as well as to the denial of disease that claimed more than one life.

Janine wrote extremely clearly of the facts of learning about her mother’s battle with cancer as she knew them at the time, and the relationships with her feelings throughout the book of losing someone so close to her so quickly. Janine’s mother was devoted to keeping a strong front at all times in front of her children, no matter how much pain she was actually in. Authors write about tragedy constantly, but Janine’s analogy to her life in relation to a nightlight couldn’t have been a more perfect analogy. Janine’s relationship with her father after her mother’s death, often tempered in intensity and mood swings, as Janine and her father tried to understand each other.

As she is growing up, experimenting and discovering who she is as a lesbian, and believing she knows who her father is, later to find out that there were even more secrets being held from her in the library room. Her father lived his life constantly like a party with his children often as his trophies, constantly disappearing for work trips, yet he tried to find companionship after his wife died to combat his loneliness to face the world. Nightlight teaches us compassion, but like in real life circumstances, doesn’t always come instantly when asked.

As Janine learns the truth about her father and how it connects to the shadows of her past, keeping the secret was something she dismissed in her own truth-telling. Janine would not participate in the darkness. Her family had a long-standing practice to keep a public face against a silent stigma that took the two people closest to her and Janine rebelled against this and spoke the truth: her father died after a long, silent battle against AIDS after a decade where the social stigma took so many, most in silence, and veiled in half-truths. Janine writes a compelling memoir that shows us the liberation of truth within her own journey to give her healing and understanding.

Janine is also the founder of Girlsalon, a forum for women and queer writers in New York City, and has also used her talents and experiences to help gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered youth in New York City by leading numerous writing groups to inspire and encourage them to discover and find their voice in their personal experiences in writing.

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