The End of Innocence: A Memoir

by Chastity Bono, Michele Kort

For the first time, Chastity Bono shares the moving story of her early how her traumatic tabloid outing as the openly gay daughter of Sonny and Cher threatened her burgeoning musical career, and how her first true love was taken from her by cancer. At an early age, Chastity survived challenges many of us never face. A story of love won and lost, of dreams fulfilled and destroyed, The End of Innocence is a coming-of-age story that provides a deeply personal look into the private struggles of a very public and courageous woman. Chastity Bono was first known as the daughter of Sonny Bono and Cher, when she made appearances on her parents' TV show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour . She established her own identity after coming out on the cover of The Advocate in 1995 and went on to become a reporter for the magazine. Since then, she's worked as the 1996 National Coming Out Project's spokesperson for the HRC. From 1997 to 1998, she was the Entertainment -Media Director for GLAAD. She is also the author of the bestselling Family Outing and continues to lecture around the country. Michele Kort is an award-winning journalist whose writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, L.A. Weekly, Shape, Redbook, Self and The Advocate . A Los Angeles resident, she is also the author of Soul The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

219 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

About the author

Chastity Bono is the birth name of Chaz Bono -- an American LGBT rights advocate and writer and the only child from entertainer Cher's marriage to Sonny Bono.

Chastity came out as a lesbian in the mid-1990s, and in mid-2008 began to transition and now identifies as male, using the name Chaz Bono.

Reviews

[Marguerite · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this book and am so moved. It's a bit "R" rated in spots.
Chas was part of a band named "Ceremony" and they came out with an album named "Hang Out Your Poetry". I was able to find it on Amazon and ordered it. After everything I read in this book the album aspires and deserves to be heard.
I relate to her experience with catastrophic illness a bit and this book so moved me that it is going into my personal library.
Thank you Chas for sharing Joan and helping her touch the world. <3

[Juanita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review: The End of Innocence by Chastity Bono.

While reading this book I could not call it a memoir. It started out about Chastity and when she first felt unusual about her gender and the struggles she had to overcome how she felt and how she was going to let her parents know. She was a lesbian for a while before she came out of the closet. She didn’t have an easy life like a lot of children of well-known parents.

As I read I thought her relationship with her parents was somewhat not a happy one. I don’t know why I felt that way but in this book she never talked about them. There were a couple short mentions of them but it was mostly about how she lived, what she did for a career, and who she hung out with but that even seemed somewhat short and sad. One thing that surprised me is that Chastity did go down that path as a singer but that was like riding a roller coaster because she and her band, “Ceremony” tried for four years and never got anywhere. She mentioned she didn’t even ask for any help from her parents. It’s like she was in another world just being Chastity.

The book was mostly about her love triangle relationship between Rachel, herself and Joan. She loved Rachel but she wasn’t happy. Joan was her true and only love of her life who she met at a young age because Joan was a good friend of her mother… For a few years she just fantasized about Joan until she sensed that Joan had feelings for her too. Also, Joan had a form of cancer where she would go into remission for long periods of time. Joan was her mother’s age but that never bothered Chastity. Most of the book was about her feeling for Joan and how close they were. However, Chastity didn’t have the forwardness to end her relationship with Rachel. She kept trying but she kept saying to Joan that she didn’t want to hurt Rachel.

Everything kept going back and forth until Joan was really sick from the cancer. Then Chastity decided she wanted to give Joan all her love. Chastity had a rough time being with Joan as her body was giving up to cancer. It was sad but I feel that this book is more a memorial to Joan, which is alright; however, it wasn’t a memoir of Chastity…

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

THIS REVIEW WAS WRITTEN IN 2002 BEFORE CHASTITY BECAME CHAZ BONO. PRONOUNS REFLECT THE WOMAN WHO WROTE IT. If Bono's story doesn't end up as a Lifetime TV movie, it will at least merit an episode of E! Hollywood True Story. The lesbian daughter of Sonny and Cher follows up her excellent coming out guide, Family Outing (1998), with a slim, honest memoir covering her turbulent life in the years between 1988 and '93. Bono and her girlfriend, Rachel, formed a band, hoping that performing together would revitalize their waning relationship but things didn't work out that way. The Star tabloid outed Bono shortly after she and Rachel signed a record deal with Geffen Records. The two novices stayed closeted while they tried to record a CD and deal with Rachel's alcoholism and the fact that Bono had fallen in love with Joan, a beautiful, 40-something friend of the family who had just been diagnosed with cancer.

Bono's fear of confrontation drags out the misery for this love triangle (and the reader) during the book's middle section, which sometimes plays like an overwrought episode of MTV's Real World. Oddly, the recording-studio scenes lack passion, and with no discussion of lyrics or orchestrations, Bono seems like an outsider in her own musical group; it's hard for the reader to feel much empathy when their single tanks.

The last half of the book, when Bono commits to Joan just as her health begins to deteriorate, packs an emotional punch with brutally frank depictions of loving and living with a person with a terminal illness. Bono spares no one, including herself, with a wrenching and exhausting finish.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite quote from this book: "A song can take you back, help you through a hard time, give voice to exactly what you are going through."

"Jan always said a relationship requires four elements: timing, lighting, chemistry and balance."

[Colleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Real-life story of her relationship with Joan, who died of cancer. Nothing special. Zipped through it in a couple of hours. Then again, I read it in 2002... maybe, given that Chastity is now Chas, maybe I'd look on it in a different light?

[Renee Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

She's not the best writer, but it was interesting to read about Chastity Bono's young life.

[Rebecca Labbe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Name-dropping and vapid.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book back in high school within one day in the aisle of a Barnes and Noble. At the time it was a good read.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very touching memoir