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A beautiful, raw and compassionate memoir about identity, love and understanding.
The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality.
When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness.
By confronting his buried past and the burden of a life lived in shadow, Garrard traces the complex relationships among family, faith, and community. At times heart-breaking, at times triumphant, this memoir is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.
- Sales Rank: #55421 in Books
- Published on: 2016-05-10
- Released on: 2016-05-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x 1.20" w x 5.70" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 352 pages
Review
"[A] powerful convergence of events that Conley portrays eloquently." —Washington Post
"The power of Conley’s story resides not only in the vividly depicted grotesqueries of the therapy system, but in his lyrical writing about sexuality and love, and his reflections on the Southern family and culture that shaped him." —Los Angeles Times
"A brave, powerful meditation on identity and faith, Boy Erased is the story of one man’s journey to accepting himself and overcoming shame and trauma in the midst of deep-rooted bigotry." —Buzzfeed (Buzzfeed's Hot Summer Reads)
"A moving memoir about discovering your true self, Boy Erased is a must-read." —Bustle
“Boy Erased is a gut-punch of a memoir, but the miracle of this book is the generosity with which Conley writes in an effort to understand the circumstances and motivations that led his family to seek the “cure”… his memoir is not simply a story of survival — in this book, a true writer comes of age. Conley writes vividly, with intelligence, wit, and genuine empathy. By embracing complexity and compassion, he reclaims his life and reminds us that a story rarely belongs to one person alone.” —LA Review of Books
“Well-written, compelling, disturbing, and ultimately quite bracing, this is an important, refreshingly unsentimental perspective on the dangers and abuses of ex-gay therapy ministries.” —Bay Area Reporter
“Wrenching and absorbing.” —Travel and Leisure
“A compelling story of perseverance and humanity.” —Outsmart Magazine
“Boy Erased isn’t a smug tale of liberal awakening: Conley is frank and articulate about the sense of loss that has come with denying his religion and, as a consequence, the family he still loves…[Conley’s] writerly eye often wanders outside non-fiction’s usual constraints. Writing stories is the work he wants to do; this book is clearly the work he needed to do.” —Toronto Star
"Exceptionally well-written... This timely addition to the debate on conversion therapy will build sympathy for both children and parents who avail themselves of it while still showing how damaging it can be." —Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
“In a sharp and shocking debut memoir, Conley digs deep into the ex-gay therapy system… An engaging memoir that will inevitably make readers long for a more equal future.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Closely observed feelings are the fuel that drives this complex coming-of-age account… Moving and thought provoking.” —Booklist
“This brave and bracing memoir is an urgent reminder that America remains a place where queer people have to fight for their lives. It’s also a generous portrait of a family in which the myths of prejudice give way before the reality of love. Equal parts sympathy and rage, Boy Erased is a necessary, beautiful book.” —Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
"An essential document of the early 21st Century. Conley bears witness to something history will eventually condemn as too horrible to have happened, but he also takes the pain of "ex-gay therapy" and makes of it not just a record but a wonder."
—Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night
“A brave account of a young man coming to terms with his sexuality in an environment that reviles him for it. A triumphant, heartfelt story.” —Julia Scheeres, New York Times–bestselling author of Jesus Land and A Thousand Lives
"Garrard Conley has a hell of story to tell, but he tells it with complete intelligence and gravity and beauty. This is a book that matters on every level, from the most intimate to the most political, and it settles into the reader's memory perfectly and permanently. Boy Erased is the book for our times — an important book, and a true companion." —Rebecca Lee, author of Bobcat and Other Stories
“Conley tells his story beautifully, with candor and courage and with compassion not only for the boy he was but for the parents who sent him to ex-gay therapy. Here at last is a story of evangelical homophobia from the inside, from a survivor and former believer, rather than from the incredulous outside. A vital book for young people still struggling with self-hatred inside the church and for anyone who’s escaped it.” —Maud Newton
“Garrard Conley’s memoir about his time in the ex-gay movement is actually about surviving an attempt at soul-murder. This is a book that had to be written, and it deserves a wide audience.” —Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love
“In 1982, Edmund White broke literary ground with his memoir A. Now it’s Garrard Conley’s turn to bring his own story to readers. As White was three decades ago for his generation, Conley is an important and necessary contemporary voice.” —Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle and Comfort
About the Author
Garrard Conley’s fiction and nonfiction can be found in The Common, The Madison Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Elizabeth Kostova Foundation writers' conferences. Conley currently teaches English literature and promotes LGBTQ equality in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Courageous. Poignant. Revealing. A Must Read. . .
By ReactingtoLit
An amazing book on so many levels! In this memoir, Garrard Conley shares intimate details of his adolescent and early adult years in his quest to understand and accept himself. His journey is made far more difficult by his fundamental Christian upbringing and his parents and community's unwillingness to accept him as he is. This leads him to ex-gay therapy which is far more harmful than helpful. Anyone who reads this book will no longer be able to accept such therapy as an acceptable treatment. Conley's willingness to expose the intimate details of his life brings the reader into his life, pulling for him to find self-love in a world that makes it difficult to do.
On another level, the book has incredible writing. The vivid descriptions, the limited but effective dialogue, the changes in time, and the development of the key people in his life at that time show Conley's incredible writing skills. Admittedly, at times I wanted to skip the descriptions in order to discover what happened next in his life. However, the quality of the writing kept me reading every word.
I will look forward to reading more by Conley!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Gut-wrenching
By SassyPants
I am writing this immediately after finishing this difficult book. Boy Erased is the author's story of struggle. He was raised in a strict Baptist home and community. His father was ordained as a Baptist minister while he was in college. And the author is gay. He is outed to his parents by a predatory college student. His parents force him into ex-gay counseling with the evangelical based Love in Action (LIA). One tenant of LIA is that gay people are damaged. Abuse is assumed and can be traced back for generations in a family. Find and confront the abuse, accept God in your life and Boom! Cured! Somehow he comes out alive. Mostly.
The book moves back and forth between Mr. Conley's childhood and adolescence and young adulthood. He has a girlfriend and the church community assumes they will marry. He tries to fake the relationship and cannot. In college he tries to both find himself and hide from himself. He is victimized by a fellow student. When his parents find out he is gay, his father threatens to cut off financial and emotional support unless the author enters treatment and is cured. Parts of the book describe the "counseling" that occurs at LIA, a 12-step based program. Mr. Conley tries to genuinely embrace the program and then tries to fake it before ultimately walking out. The tipping point for him is a Gestalt empty chair exercise in which he is encouraged to express anger at his father. Anger that he does not feel.
The richest parts of the book for me are when Mr. Conley tries to describe his conflicted feelings. What does it feel like to love your parents, know they love you, but also know that they cannot accept who you are? To know that they think you are diseased? What does it feel like to never be honest about yourself with your friends? What does it feel like to love God, apply the scriptures to your life, and then feel abandoned by God and the church when you need them most? My criticism of the book is that I wish these areas had been explored and fleshed out more. That said, Mr. Conley's recovery is still a work in progress and the confusion and mixed feelings are real. I would love to read what he would write about himself in 10 or 20 years.
I would definitely recommend this book. Hopefully it will make us all think more. Words and actions hurt and the damage can take a long time to scab over. Scars remain. Let's be kind to each other folks!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
This might have been my story
By Kenneth Kilgour
That could have been me. When I came out decades ago, my Mom lovingly suggested that I go hear an ex-gay speaker at our church. I was grown, married, and divorcing. Not being reliant on parents makes it easier to resist such invitations, as does being older. Moreover, I had the support of a loving wife who would have skinned me alive. But about the book. . . .
This was more of a history book for me, perhaps because of my vantage point. I still found it moving, but not earth shattering, as some have described. Garrard's gift, and what made the book wonderful for me, is his failure to demonize anyone -- himself (more or less), his parents, or God. His ability to see the dignity in his mother and father -- very different folks -- and the dignity in others that he encounters on his journey is one of the special qualities in this memoir.
It wasn't my story, but his writing is adept enough that he takes you on his journey with him, and I was engrossed enough that for a few hours, his story was mine. I recommend the book, even for someone who, like me, passed these milestones some time ago.
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