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What it argues
Boy Erased is Garrard Conley's memoir of attending Love in Action, a conversion therapy program in Memphis, Tennessee, in the early 2000s. Conley was nineteen and the son of a Baptist pastor in a small Arkansas town when he was outed to his parents by a fellow student who had assaulted him. His parents, deeply committed to their faith and convinced that homosexuality was something that could and should be changed, enrolled him in a two-week residential program. The memoir moves between his time in the program and the events that led him there.
Conley writes about conversion therapy from the inside, which means the reader experiences not just its methods but his own ambivalence during it. He genuinely loved his parents and genuinely feared losing them. He also genuinely understood, at some level, that the program's premises were false — but he was not yet in a position to act on that knowledge. The book traces the accumulation of evidence that finally allowed him to leave, and the much longer process of understanding what had been done to him and what he had allowed.
What it gets right
- 1.
Conversion therapy's harm is not primarily in physical abuse but in the systematic teaching of self-loathing and the promise that identity can be changed through effort and faith.
- 2.
Conley's parents acted from genuine love rather than cruelty, which makes the book's critique of the conditions that enable conversion therapy more than a simple indictment of bad people.
- 3.
The assault that preceded Conley's enrollment — and the way it was handled — reveals how institutions protect their reputations over their members.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Garrard Conley is an American writer and LGBTQ+ activist. He was born in Arkansas and grew up in a Baptist household. Boy Erased, his debut memoir, was published in 2016 and became the basis for a 2018 film of the same name starring Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, and Russell Crowe. Conley has been an outspoken advocate for conversion therapy bans and has testified before legislative bodies on the subject. He has written for various publications and taught creative writing. He holds an MFA from Bennington College.
