Home › Books › Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing: Essays
Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing: Essays
by
85/99
Critics
46/99
Readers
n/a
Scholars
93/99
Rating
77/99
Volume
5/99
Rating
88/99
Volume
—
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
Searing and extremely personal essays from the heart of working-class America, shot through with the darkest elements the country can manifest--cults, homelessness, and hunger--while discovering light and humor in unexpected corners. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL. 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, Ecuador--but it wasn't until her mother finally walked away 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.
Preview
Reviews
"A page-turning account of belonging and not belonging, and what it means to start over."
"Hough's book isn't really a cult memoir — it's about so much more than that (and it's also quite funny, although you'll have to take my word on that because most of the funny bits include expletives I can't quote here)."
"But they're also well crafted and make unexpected connections ..."
"Society is messed up, but for anyone other than an employed cisgender heterosexual White male, Hough's experiences show, it's a mess on top of a shambles."
"Her story is not one readers often see, and it deserves a wide audience."
"At the work's heart is the therapeutic act of telling, and while some sections gesture toward cultural criticism, Hough is at her best when illuminating her circumstances."
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!