Endangered Species
Memoir in progress
by Melanie Beth Curran, with Colin Patrick Curran
By compiling letters, journal entries, web pages, photographs, ephemera, interviews, and personal narrative, Melanie Curran reconstructs the life of her deceased uncle, Colin Curran. She scours modern day New York City for the places his body once moved, from 1976 - 1983, such as : A self-help cult for gay men in a 9th street basement, an East Village tenement clubhouse, and a mass grave in the Bronx. Spaces of physical contact between the living and the ancestral are represented through collaged materials / text. In an effort to better understand their shared role as outsider in a large, Irish Catholic family, the author finishes the story Colin left behind, leading up to his suicide in 1983.
This book makes reference to: