Boy Erased A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family

A memoir with so much depth

Bewertung am 27.06.2023
Bewertungsnummer: 1969075
Bewertet: Buch (Taschenbuch)

"Later that night, when my father said, "You'll never step foot in this house again if you act on your feelings. You'll never finish your education;" I thought, Fair enough." This is the memoir of someone who went through the experience of conversion therapy because of his sexual orientation and years later remembered this for the world to know. Throughout this memoir it was plain how in love with writing and literature the author is. When he entered conversion therapy after his parents signed him up, Garrard Conly had to give up his notebook with his beloved short stories. Reading about the plethora of restrictions set upon for them to be sculpted to fit a certain standard was difficult to read at times. Especially the vocabulary that the attendants of this "therapy" had to adopt and how they basically got all of their personality erased. In aspects of writing style, it was palpable how difficult it must have been to write and sometimes felt eerily disconnected to the story. Religious topics were obviously a heavy theme throughout the book. What startled me the most, was the realisation that all of this happened not even that long ago and somewhere is still being practiced by others.