A rhapsodic and provocative collection of essays on race, class, sexuality and identity in America

Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin

Effortless, fearless and honest

The first time you read Hilton Als, it's a revelation ... you wonder where this guy has been all your life ... He is both a startlingly insightful intellectual and a friendly, open and generous-spirited companion. It is the authenticity of his voice which makes him so compelling. That and the sheer dazzling brilliance of his writing, visceral and poetic, big-hearted, hot-headed and fierce'

Enlightening... a book you should read now

The variations he plays on the themes of identity, intimacy and race achieve a fugue-like complexity and power

Beautiful and deeply intelligent

A stunning analysis of contemporary culture ... undoubtedly one of the most important books of our times

Pioneering ... a mosaic of thoughts and observations, taking in the landscape of a New York ravaged by AIDS and his private grief for his lost lover, imagining silent film star Louise Brookes' drawling inner life, and examining his own complicated relationship with his sexuality and blackness

Magnificent

Stunning

Exhilarating ... Audacious

Brilliant

Mesmerising

This will be debated for years

This book will change you

I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged

An intersectional masterpiece of race and sexuality, fact and fiction, memoir and polemic. The book that allowed a generation to make radicalism full of beauty and emotion

It’s an important book. I had to read it right through. It tackles some tough issues and is searingly honest

I got so much out of that book and I know a lot of people have. It’s helping a lot of people. It’s a bible.

I’m about to read Straight Jacket for a second time. Brilliant, important, inspiring, brave.

An honest insight into LGBTQ life that everybody should be enlightened about regardless of sexuality.

This powerful book, I believe, will save lives. I’d like to see every gay man read this.

A superb book… Have read it twice now.

The book we should all be talking about.

Thank you for writing this book. It is a must read.

One of the best books we have ever read. Honest, thought provoking and much needed.

Finally started to read Straight Jacket. I’m already blown away. An incredibly honest and insightful read. Bravo Matthew.

This book should have been written a long time ago, but it wasn't...Everyone, no matter what their background, will benefit from reading this book. A much-needed and healing work of tough love, written with love.

A sensitive subject, brilliantly and intelligently handled.

An excoriating book, Straight Jacket: How to be Gay and Happy delves into contemporary gay culture to address a plethora of issues gay people continue to face in 2016.

Insightful, inclusive, clever and engaging