Soldier of the Year: The Story of a Gay American Patriot - Hardcover

Zuniga, Jose

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671888145 ISBN 13: 9780671888145

Publisher: Pocket Books, 1994

Synopsis

In March of 1993, the Army pronounced Gulf War veteran Sgt. Jose Zuniga the 1992 Soldier of the Year. Six weeks later, Zuniga's military career ended when he revealed that he was gay. This is an intensely personal account of the homophobia and hypocrisy that pervades the American military.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

As a boy growing up in Indiana and Texas, Joe Zuniga originally wanted to be a priest - the Zunigas were devout Catholics. But his family had a strong military tradition, and Joe's Mexican-American father considered military service to be the one fittingly masculine profession for his only son. Joe was offered a congressional appointment to West Point, but declined it to stay near home when his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Arriving at boot camp in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1989, Joe began a military career that took off at an astounding pace. During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm he excelled as both a journalist and a combat medic, earning decorations in both capacities, and rose rapidly to the rank of sergeant. After the war, Joe married to avoid questions about his personal life, and landed a plum assignment as editor of the newspaper at the Presidio of San Francisco, where he won both Journalist of the Year and Soldier of the Year. Joe appeared to be on a fast track to the Pentagon, his future in the military assured. Then he tired of living a lie. Picking up where Randy Shilts' Conduct Unbecoming leaves off, Soldier of the Year is an intensely candid account of the homophobia and hypocrisy that pervade the American military - and much of American society. While in the Army, Joe was horrified to discover the gestapo-like treatment of gays in the military, but was heartened by President Clinton's early pledges to open the ranks of the armed forces to all men and women, gay or straight. Joe felt that by very publicly coming out of the closet he could help make a difference. He could not have imagined the byzantine punishments the Army had in store for him - norClinton's political retreat that resulted in the infamous "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue" policy. The Soldier of the Year was discharged. Honest and unflinching, Soldier of the Year is a powerful report from the front lines of a heated controversy that shows no signs of abating. It is the autobiography of a young man who cast aside what his family and society expected him to be for the sake of freedom and love, and for the opportunity to forge his identity on his own terms. In his courageous struggle to become himself, Joe Zuniga gives hope to us all.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0671888145
• ISBN 13: 9780671888145
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 323
• Editor: Miller Tom