Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith and Family by Garrard Conley
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 institutionalised 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 heartbreaking, at times triumphant, this memoir is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.
About the Author
Garrard Conley's fiction and nonfiction can be found in Time, Vice and on CNN.com, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Elizabeth Kostova Foundation writers' conferences. A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Boy Erased , Conley lives and teaches in Brooklyn, New York.
Paperback | 352 pages
129 x 198 x 26mm | 290g
14 Jun 2018
HarperCollins Publishers
William Collins
London, United Kingdom
English
ISBN10: 0008276986
9780008276980
Condition: Good
A book that has been read but is in good condition. Very minimal damage to the cover, including creasing running down the front and back covers, parallel to the spine, and creasing on the top-left corner of the back cover, but no holes or tears. A previous owner has covered the book in. All pages are undamaged, with very minimal (barely visible) creasing on a very small handful of pages but no tearing. No pencil underlining of text, no highlighting of text, no writing in margins. No missing pages.