Behind Boy Erased: Garrard Conley
Photo courtesy of Garrard Conley
Growing up, Garrard Conley faced stark rejection of his LGTBQ identity by his town and family. Part of this rejection includes being sent to a conversion camp in his youth. Rather than letting this exclusion paralyze him, Garrard decided to use his creativity and experience to create a literary space for LGBTQ readers. One of his most notable works is Boy Erased, a book that has been adapted into a major motion picture. Garrard looks to give LGBTQ youth something he never had: acknowledgment of their uniqueness and struggle.
LTA: Could you introduce yourself and explain what you do?
I’m Garrard Conley. I wrote the book Boy Erased which was published in 2016 and then turned into a film last year. I do a lot of advocacy work: often going around to universities, schools, nonprofit organizations, and sometimes companies to try to advocate for the ending of conversion therapy and, more largely, the eradication of the kinds of bigotry that I encountered in my youth.
LTA: So you mentioned your youth. Could you describe what your personal journey with your LGBTQ+ identity has been like?
I think that interestingly my experience in a small town in Arkansas isn’t so different from what a lot of people experience today—minus one thing: we have a whole lot more representation by the internet and in film these days. But I grew up in a very conservative household in a very conservative town. My childhood home was only a population of a hundred people and the main community building that we had was centered entirely around our church - a baptist church. There was this belief within the church and all the people that I knew that the Bible was to be read literally - which, as you probably know by now, is impossible. There was a reliance on the word of God as it being the final source of all information. For example, in Leviticus it says, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind.” It was taken to be literal even though a few chapters and verses later it talks about not eating shrimp or touching a woman who is menstruating; and we certainly are not so concerned with those things any more. That was sort of the environment that I grew up in. It was also undergoing some changes at the time culturally where I am from. As I grew up, you know into my teens when I had a girlfriend, I was also sort of coerced into believing in a political vision of the United States that was very war-heavy. George W. Bush was talking about the fake weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and anything—whether it was questioning the Bible’s literal meaning or talking about sexuality or talking about abortion or talking about whether or not our president was doing something unethical—was seen as suspect. So if you were talking like one of those liberals or professors, then there was something wrong and maybe there was sin in you. So there's a lot of anti-intellectualism and at the same time a lot of bigotry against LGBTQ people. The only real reference my parents had was seeing pictures, usually in the media. They would try to find the raunchiest pictures of the pride parade or it would be Matthew Shepard being left for dead and tied up to a fence post. And so my parents, along with myself, didn't see a future for being queer in our community (even though one night when it was late, I came across an episode of “Queer as Folk” which is horribly dated now but, at the time was very revolutionary to see). So I knew that there were people in places like the coast who were more open, but that all seemed like a fantasy to me.
LTA: How would you say that your experience, of growing up in the South and with conversion therapy, has shaped how you live your life today?
Well, first of all, I would never have gone to conversion therapy if I hadn’t had that training as a kid to see the world in a black and white, us-versus-them mentality. I wouldn’t have agreed to do something so absurd and so anti-science. We weren't even taught in high school about evolution; we were told to skip that chapter. Second, if I hadn’t gone to conversion therapy, I would have had a good decade of my life back. I would have been learning instead of dealing with the aftermath of conversion therapy and having my family reject me. I’d always wanted to be a writer since I was nine years old, so maybe I would’ve written five books instead of one. But if you think too much about that it’ll drive you a little bit insane. I don't believe in that really harmful narrative of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I think sometimes these things do kill you and they don't make you stronger: they make you weaker. I do see that my interest in advocacy and making sure that other kids don't go through what I went through is a big part of my life. There's also the fact that everything I do and my writing now is about the conflict between religion and sexuality, which means that there doesn’t always have to be a conflict; there are plenty of LGBTQ people who are happily faithful and in different religious practices. But to me, that is a subject of great interest—how do you subscribe to a faith that is, by its very nature, oppositional to your being? I just find that to be a really interesting subject. Writers are always shaped by their experiences and the key to being a good writer is realizing what material in your life is good for drama. And I think I did that. I'm proud of turning what was a really shameful and terrifying experience of my life into something that feels like a beacon for other people now.
LTA: You mentioned your memoir: Boy Erased. What originally inspired you to write the memoir?
I wasn’t going to write it; I was trying to write fiction. Right after I graduated college, I decided that I needed to make a big change in my life and see the rest of the world. So I joined Peace Corps and went to Ukraine for three years and taught high school there and did HIV/AIDS training in their small village schools. And, while I was there, I finally got internet in my apartment and found all these blogs devoted to people who had been survivors of conversion therapy and they were revealing these details about their lives that were so personal. They were saying things like “every time I touch my partner, I feel like my skin is on fire.” When I read that I thought, “Oh, so everyone doesn't feel like their skin is on fire when they’re with their partner?” I’d lived my life believing intimacy felt like that. I realized I had to do a lot of work on myself when I found that out. I still resisted telling my story because wondered “Am I going to hurt my family? Am I going to get it accurate? Will I even remember everything that happened?” So I just started casually interviewing my family members and that was when I knew that the story could be bigger than just my struggle. Eventually it became this cultural moment that involved many of the issues that we're talking about now; it's also like a window into a part of the world that people don't always understand.
My ambition was finally satisfied when I got the story from “John Smith” who tortured me and I’d friended him on Facebook, which was really awkward. I started asking him really hard questions. He didn’t always supply the most honest answers, but they were enough to point me to a psychological profile of him. When that was done, I felt like I had a story. And I think that’s sometimes missed. In part, my story that became so popular because of the movie. And yet, no one has to see some young person suffer - but I think that gets lost from the book to the screen transition. Actually, this is a whole portrait of a town that decided to do something out of love that is actually very terrifying. And the certainly is more interesting. Especially now when we look at people voting in ways that are killing other people; and they think they're doing it to protect their loved ones... and that's terrifying to me.
LTA: Once you decided that you wanted to tell the story, what impact were you hoping the book would have?
You know going into a book like this—a queer book—there’s a chance that it won’t succeed. You have to really decide like is it worth it? Is it worth telling these truths that are really hard - that might hurt your family? If only one person reads it and finds solace in it, then the answer is yes. I didn’t know what to expect; I was just so thrilled that the book had been published by a great publisher. It didn't sell that well but I started receiving a lot of emails from people who have really been touched by the book. I think that was when I realized that it was something special; that it may not sell a lot, but it'll do the work that its supposed to do. The book got on all of these lists that first year in December, and that was when it started to gain momentum. It was on Oprah’s List, it got on BuzzFeed a couple of times... things like that. Then, in January, I was contacted by a producer from Anonymous Content and started meeting with Joel Edgerton—that was really surreal. Then, when the movie came out, my book was on the New York Times Bestseller List for four weeks, which was unthinkable.
LTA: How did it feel to see your story being told on a movie screen starring Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe?
If it's your life, it's going to feel really weird watching yourself from this external perspective. Lucas Hedges was so good at capturing my pain because we'd met a lot and I could see him studying my face. He got all of how that pain is inscribed on my face, and that's really disturbing to watch because not only did he pay attention and manage to internalize it, but that’s how people saw me - and that was very disturbing. So as much as I loved the experience and thrill of someone, these fantastic A-list actors, honoring my story, it was very hard to process. The hardest part for me was realizing the disparity between how some people live—the huge amounts of wealth that they have versus the people that I know back home. That was the hardest part for me, actually, even considering the LGBTQ+ issues.
LTA: Currently 16 states have passed legislation banning conversion therapy; do you believe that your work has had an impact on raising awareness of the harm that the practice causes?
I do. I know that because, not only have I had some people come to tell me that but, they're using my book and the film and holding screenings around the country to raise awareness about conversion therapy. I obviously can't claim all the credit because it’s not only my film but, there's also The Miseducation of Cameron Post which came out last year—also a really great film that I consulted on—and then there's the Trevor Project, which has been doing so much hard work, and Matthew Shepherd, who is a wonderful advocate for LGBTQ rights. There are so many names of people who are doing this work at a far greater capacity and speed than I am and I'm just happy to be a part of it. I would never even say that my superpower was in storytelling; so I try not to go outside of it too much because I don't think I’m built for direct activism. I think I'm primarily a writer and artist who happens to be in a position where now I can help people, but I think there's a big distinction to be made. Some people really live for advocacy work and you can tell it. They are energized by those interactions and are even energized by conflict - and I'm just not. I come back from an event and, even if it lasts two hours, I need five hours to recover. I need to think about what I really believe all the time. I think that there are other people that are doing the hard work. i hope they use my story in whatever capacity to do that work.
LTA: Do you have any advice for LGBT youth that may be battling with the intersection of their religion and sexuality?
One thing is not to feel any pressure to come out. I was outed and that ruined my life in a lot of ways: I think I would have found a way to tell my parents much later, when I was in a safer place, so that I wouldn’t be under their influence. That was incredibly terrifying and I think that there's a pressure, especially if you're on Twitter, to be out and proud—and that's great, I love that. But also remember that you don't have to come out on someone else’s terms. If you feel unsafe, then don't. The other thing is that there is a whole world out there where your faith and your sexuality can be reconciled. And, in fact, especially if you're Christian there is a long tradition of rereading the Bible according to Jesus’s compassion. So you don't have to give it up. If, however, you feel like your faith community is harming you and you don't want any part of it anymore, there are also ways to extricate yourself from that that are much less painful than being told that God doesn't love you for who you are. It comes down to small networks: a friend who understands you or places like the Trevor Project if you're having trouble. Luckily, we live in a world where the internet can provide a lot more safety. But, at the same time, I talk to a lot of kids who say that as much as the world has changed, they still feel isolated in their community dealing with the internet as it is today: it seems like a fantasy to live openly. My advice would be to be patient with yourself. Don't turn that anger and frustration inwards; a lot of the time as queer people, we tend to blame ourselves for our conditions. You have to fight for your right. For me, conversion therapy is also a metaphor for what queer people endure in this country. We're all, in some form or another, being told that the way we are is not enough or it’s too much. And in this Administration especially, we can see that. We're all in this together. There are varying levels of how much it sucks but we're all a family that has survived something and is surviving something right now. So you're not alone. And that's the biggest thing that I didn't know at the time—that I wasn’t alone.
Garrard’s Podcast, UnErased, can be found here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unerased-first-listen/id1439513792?i=1000422138028&mt=2
Written by Adelaide Graham and Morgan Lee
Edited by Serene De Sisso
May 2019