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Searing and extremely personal essays, shot through with the darkest elements America can manifest, while discovering light and humor in unexpected corners.
As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe—to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile—but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond "The Family."
Along the way, she's loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next. She's taken pilgrimages to the sights of her youth, been kept in solitary confinement, dated a lot of women, dabbled in drugs, and eventually found herself as what she always wanted to be: a writer. Here, as she sweeps through the underbelly of America—relying on friends, family, and strangers alike—she begins to excavate a new identity even as her past continues to trail her and color her world, relationships, and perceptions of self.
At once razor-sharp, profoundly brave, and often very, very funny, the essays in Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing interrogate our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely. Each piece is a reckoning: of survival, identity, and how to reclaim one's past when carving out a future.
A VINTAGE ORIGINAL
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 13, 2021 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593394236
- File size: 264195 KB
- Duration: 09:10:24
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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August 1, 2021
Imagine changing your first name every time you moved. And you moved frequently. That's what Hough experienced growing up in a cult where she lived all over the world; when she finally left, she discovered she no longer had an identity. She knew she was a lesbian, though she didn't really know what that meant in practical terms; in the cult, it was something to be beaten out of her. She joined the U.S. Air Force under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," where she faced so much harassment that she eventually announced that she was a lesbian, in order to get a discharge. She spent years working in bars, working at cash jobs, and being one paycheck away from homelessness. Yet her essays don't inspire pity, as she doesn't feel sorry for herself. An essay about working as a cable company technician went viral online and details the depths to which humanity has sunk. She's funny, poignant, sweetly na�ve, painfully honest, and brave. Hough and Cate Blanchett pair up to narrate the audiobook; Blanchett's reading is naturally more fluent, but it's personal for Hough, which comes through clearly. VERDICT Recommended for public library collections.--Jodi L. Israel, Orlando, FL
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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