“She lives in a strange kind of world where Conner is straight…anything instead of what he is, a gay shop clerk with more friends than she’ll ever have, a taste of free will.”
A lot of the story revolves around Michael and his wanting of love and acceptance from his parents, but he knows he’ll never fully get that from them. The great thing about this book is you don’t have to identify as LGBQT to relate to Michael and the other characters. There were many intimate moments in We Are Lost and Found – being sexual, confiding in people, or just being your free true self for a moment. In a way, it felt like a journal made it feel more intimate. When the characters spoke, she didn’t use quotations, so it was almost like a stream of consciousness.
“At that moment, a gun would cause less panic in New York City than a gay boy bleeding.”ĭunbar has a great style of writing. It wasn’t always spoken of, even to your closest friends if you knew someone who died from AIDS. In We Are Lost and Found, she showcased how taboo it was to talk about people dying from AIDS. Michael wanted to be able to freely discover himself in the LGBTQ world, but was scared of the danger and possibility of contracting a deadly virus. Dunbar showed how one wanted to live the life they wanted, but always have a cloud of fear over them. Helen Dunbar did a wonderful job of telling a story that I think a lot of the LGBTQ community in the 80s and 90s lived through and can relate to. It’s not until he meets Gabriel is when everything comes head on – love, AIDS, family, fear, safety.
Michael is desperately trying to figure out who he is as a person and where he belongs along with his friends who are going through their own struggles. Michael is terrified to come out to his parents because his older brother, Connor, was disowned by their father for coming out. He is navigating his life as a “yet-to-come-out” gay teen in New York City amidst the AIDS crisis. We Are Lost and Found follows Michael, a junior in high school, in 1983. Indie Review: We Are Lost and Found by Helene Dunbar
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