Lit with Liberate: Boy Erased by Garrard Conley
Join the Lit with Liberate Reading Group
Lit with Liberate will meet in June to discuss Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith and Family by Garrard Conley. Multiple copies of Boy Erased are available to borrow, please email Beth at [email protected] to reserve yours. We’ll have an optional drinks social at the Cock & Bull afterwards.
**Zoom attendance possible, please let us know if you want to take part this way and we’ll send you the details**
A beautiful, raw and compassionate memoir about identity, love and understanding. Now a major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Lucas Hedges, directed by Joel Edgerton..
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.
No booking required. If you haven’t read the book but want to come along for a taster of the book group, please do!