In The One You Get: Portrait of a Family Organism, Jason Tougaw marries neuroscience and family lore to tell his story of growing up gay...

In The One You Get: Portrait of a Family Organism, Jason Tougaw marries neuroscience and family lore to tell his story of growing up gay in 1970s Southern California, raised by hippies who had "dropped out" in the late sixties and couldn't seem to find their way back in. "There's something wrong with our blood," the family mantra ran, "and it affects our brains"--a catchall answer for incidents such as Tougaw's schizophrenic great-grandfather directing traffic in the nude on the Golden Gate Bridge, the author's own dyslexia and hypochondria, and the near-death experience of his notorious jockey grandfather, Ralph Neves.

With shades of Oliver Sacks and Susannah Cahalan, this honest and unexpected true story recasts the memoir to answer some of life's big questions: "Where did I come from," "How did I become me," and "What happens when the family dog accidentally overdoses on acid?"

Author: Jason Tougaw
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 09/12/2017
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781945814327


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 08/01/2017 pg. 14

About the Author
Tougaw, Jason: - Jason Tougaw is a professor of literature at City University of New York. He is the author of two nonfiction books, Strange Cases: The Medical Case History and the British Novel and Touching Brains: Literary Experiments in 21st-Century Neuromania. Excerpts from The One You Get have appeared in Boys to Men: Gay Men Write about Growing Up and Electra Street: A Journal of the Arts and Humanities. He blogs about the relationship between art and science at Californica.net.