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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2016, 352 pages
Paperback:
Feb 2017, 352 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Mollie Smith Waters
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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.
MONDAY, JUNE 7, 2004
John Smid stood tall, square shouldered, beaming behind thin wire-rimmed glasses and wearing the khaki slacks and striped button-down that have become standard fatigues for evangelical men across the country. The raised outlines of his undershirt stretched taut beneath his shirt, his graying blond hair tamed by the size-five hair clippers common in Sport Clips throughout the South. The rest of us sat in a semicircle facing him, all dressed according to the program dress code outlined in our 274-page handbooks.
Men: Shirts worn at all times, including periods of sleep. T shirts without sleeves not permitted, whether worn as outer or undergarments, including "muscle shirts" or other tank tops. Facial hair removed seven days weekly. Sideburns never below top of ear.
Women: Bras worn at all times, exceptions during sleep. Skirts must fall at the knee or below. Tank tops allowed only if worn with a blouse. Legs and underarms shaved at least twice ...
Boy Erased is a poignant non-fiction work. Conley’s struggle to be a good son and devoted Christian while coping with his homosexuality is powerfully explored, as is his parents’ inability to cope with their son’s sexual orientation...continued
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(Reviewed by Mollie Smith Waters).
Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night
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. Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle and Comfort
"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. Maud Newton
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.In his memoir Boy Erased, Garrard Conley discusses both his struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality and his parents' attempt to return him to heterosexuality through Love in Action (LIA), which was renamed Restoration Path in 2012. According to the program's website, "Restoration Path is a Christian discipleship ministry that exists to restore those trapped in sexual and relational sin through the power of Jesus Christ." It further states that "Restoration Path is passionately committed to helping people discover the truth about God and about who they really are in his son Jesus. In the safety and strength of God's love men and women of all ages have found the courage to step out of destructive and life-dominating ...
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