Soldier of the Year - Softcover

Zuniga, Jose

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671888153 ISBN 13: 9780671888152

Publisher: Pocket, 1995

Synopsis

This riveting, firsthand account of a young man's struggle to discover his own identity in the midst of military homophobia is "a lively and colorful but also extraordinarily openhearted work . . . (from) a remarkable journalist, a natural leader, a new hero" (Torie Osborn, The Advocate).

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

The 1992 recipient of the Soldier of the Year award, who saw a brilliant Army career crumble when he decided to come out of the closet, breathlessly recaptures the events surrounding his sensational gesture. Zuniga comes from a family with deep roots in the US military; he clearly has great respect for the Army as an institution, with the exception of its ruling on homosexuals. His home life of military-style discipline is described affectionately and fairly, as is his successful career as an Army journalist. Boot camp at Fort Hood is seen as a period of exultant self-discovery. He did not find it difficult to maintain a clandestine gay lifestyle inside the Army, he says--in fact, most of his friends there were gay. We get interesting behind-the-lines scenes of the Gulf War, in which he served as a medic; he seems to stress his bonding relations with straight men as if to prove that sexual orientation did not interfere with duty. A turning point suddenly arrived when the predicament of a lesbian supply technician (sexually harassed and then dishonorably discharged at the harasser's instigation) aroused Zuniga's guilt at not announcing his own homosexuality. Transferred to San Francisco's Presidio barracks, he felt his double life ready to overtake him. He made his announcement on April 24, 1993, just four months after President Clinton's reiterated promise to lift the ban on gays in the armed services. Zuniga is a bit too taken with his own heroism here: ``I risked it not to become a Nelson Mandela or Andrei Sakharovtype figure in gay history,'' he says unironically, ``but because Silence truly does equal Death.'' That he did not, unlike those men, spend years in confinement for his actions does not, alas, seem to have occurred to him. Honest and emotionally charged, but marred by childish and clich‚d political rhetoric. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

A staunch Republican and patriot who loved the Army, Sergeant Zuniga was a military journalist who served in the Gulf War and was honored as the Sixth Army's 1993 Soldier of the Year. A gay man whose wife was a lesbian, he had been hiding his sexual orientation behind the "happily married" facade. But living a duplicitous life was increasingly hard on him, and his crisis of conscience was dramatically resolved when he delivered a coming-out speech during the gay/lesbian demonstrations in April 1993 in Washington, D.C., before an audience of nearly a million. The Army reacted swiftly, stripping him of his rank and threatening him with a court-martial for a minor uniform infraction. Since his discharge-which was honorable-Zuniga has been busy speaking out for gay rights and expressing his disgust over President Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" compromise, which Zuniga calls a "sellout to homophobes and bigots." His book includes a vivid picture of San Francisco's Castro Street culture (Zuniga was stationed at the Presidio in that city) and a poignant account of his relationship with his macho father and tenderhearted mother. This well-told personal story avoids shrillness and self-righteousness, and wins admiration for Zuniga's courage.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pocket
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0671888153
• ISBN 13: 9780671888152
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336