Synopses & Reviews
“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.” — Los Angeles Times
“This brave and bracing memoir is an urgent reminder that America remains a place where queer people have to fight for their lives… Boy Erased is a necessary, beautiful book.” — Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
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.
Review
“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
Review
“Boy Erased is a gut-punch of a memoir....A true writer comes of age. Conley writes vividly, with intelligence, wit, and genuine empathy.” LA Review of Books
Review
“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)
Review
“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.” Los Angeles Times
Review
“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
Review
“[A] powerful convergence of events that Conley portrays eloquently.” Washington Post
About the Author
Garrard Conley’s fiction and nonfiction can be found in Time, Vice, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and on CNN.com, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Elizabeth Kostova Foundation writers’ conferences. Conley lives and teaches in Brooklyn, New York