Diary of a Misfit

A Memoir and a Mystery

By: Casey Parks

Narrated by: Casey Parks

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Part memoir, part sweeping journalistic saga: As Casey Parks follows the mystery of a stranger's past, she is forced to reckon with her own sexuality, her fraught Southern identity, her tortured yet loving relationship with her mother, and the complicated role of faith in her life.

"Most moving is Parks’s depiction of a queer lineage, her assertion of an ancestry of outcasts, a tapestry of fellow misfits into which the marginalized will always, for better or worse, fit." —The New York Times Book Review

When Casey Parks came out as a lesbian in college back in 2002, she assumed her life in the South was over. Her mother shunned her, and her pastor asked God to kill her. But then Parks's grandmother, a stern conservative who grew up picking cotton, pulled her aside and revealed a startling secret. "I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man," and then implored Casey to find out what happened to him. Diary of a Misfit is the story of Parks's life-changing journey to unravel the mystery of Roy Hudgins, the small-town country singer from grandmother’s youth, all the while confronting ghosts of her own.

For ten years, Parks traveled back to rural Louisiana and knocked on strangers’ doors, dug through nursing home records, and doggedly searched for Roy’s own diaries, trying to uncover what Roy was like as a person—what he felt; what he thought; and how he grappled with his sense of otherness. With an enormous heart and an unstinting sense of vulnerability, Parks writes about finding oneself through someone else’s story, and about forging connections across the gulfs that divide us.

Great story and so well read!

This moving memoir is so well-written and compelling. Heartbreaking and hope-giving. And the writer herself does a wonderful job of reading it to us.

Depressing life in the south

It’s hard to be different where everyone is the same. Not a happy ending. Just getting up out the mud.

Great story, Casey

It is good to hear your voice again. It was also good to hear your reference to our meeting, if even obliquely, when you mentioned covering the story about the “multi-modal” center in Hillsboro. I loved the story, and will read it again.
Best wishes,
Hal on wheels Ballard

My favorite book of 2022

This was absolutely stellar. Beautifully written, a story of identity, family, and belonging. A story that opens up the south like I haven’t read before. I hope Casey gets all of the accolades she deserves. I laughed, cried, questioned, and thought all throughout this book.

Fantastic parallel stories

Seeking to learn about a person, and about oneself, is a journey that never ends and sometimes never has a final resolution. I really enjoyed reading this book!