Read 43 of 2022. Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough

Title: Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing: Essays Author: Lauren Hough
Publisher: Coronet, Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9781529382525
Genre: Essays, Memoir, LGBTQIA
Pages: 314
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

I was most curious about this book, well, because of the title, and who wouldn’t be right? I mean we have all been there, when it comes to leaving and being left, in whatever form and manner. And rightly so this collection of essays from Hough’s life and observations, brought me to tears, a couple of essays in.

This book is about so many things – about growing up in a cult, about coming of age, about realising you are lesbian and in the military, about being ousted from service because of your identity, about being taught to please men sexually in the cult since you were twelve years old, and struggling with insomnia, PTSD, and mental health issues.

Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing is a brutal collection of essays. At times it is real, cringe, heartbreaking even, defining so many points in Hough’s life and in relation to the world, it is funny, making all meaning from the trauma and suffering, and above all relatable.

I found so many pieces that I could emotionally connect with – the time she is gaslighted by her superiors at work, or her first time encountering a gaybourhood (though I found that comfort with friends), and a lot also about hope really.

Hough’s writing is as real as it gets. The reader is not spared the details. There are no solutions, neither Hough asks for them. She tells about her life the way it was, and the way it is. You just cannot turn away from it.

The Times I Knew I Was Gay by Eleanor Crewes

Title: The Times I Knew I Was Gay
Author: Eleanor Crewes
Publisher: Virago Books, Hachette UK
ISBN: 9780349013213
Genre: Graphic Memoir, LGBT Literature
Pages: 308
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

I wish this book was out when I was coming out to my family and friends. I wish this book was out also when I was coming out to my colleagues at my first workplace, and then constantly as I moved jobs. Sometimes I think that for me, my life is a constant coming out process. Coming out so many times that I have probably lost count. Till I wrote a book about it and that was that. But that’s a different story.

The Times I Knew I Was Gay is a graphic memoir by Eleanor Crewes and how she came out to her friends, her brother, and finally to herself about being gay. This book hits you hard in the sense that if you’re on the spectrum, you can so understand how difficult it is to know and yet deny who you are. To know it deep down and keep putting that thought at the back of your head, or at best living two lives – one straight, and the other when you are all alone, when you finally acknowledge being gay out loud, to yourself.

The Times I Knew I Was Gay also makes you see how liberating coming out of the closet can be, and at the same time it also very subtly hints at how it is no one else’s business but yours if you’d like to come out or not. I will never understand why people speculate about someone’s orientation/identity. It will always baffle me why do some people want other people to come out the closet. What’s in it for them? How does it impact their lives?

This graphic memoir on so many levels felt so personal. It made me see my confusion when I came out at 18. It made me see how I was in denial for the longest time, and how I wanted to be someone else, and fit in, even if it meant being straight. The Times I Knew I Was Gay is a warm, personal, charming, and honest account of awkwardness, self-denial, fear of not belonging, and what it takes to come to your own being.

How We Fight For Our Lives: A Memoir by Saeed Jones

Title: How We Fight For Our Lives: A Memoir
Author: Saeed Jones
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 978-1501132735
Genre: Memoirs, LGBT
Pages: 208
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

This book to some extent made me see the mirror. Saeed’s story isn’t very different from mine, though it is. His story of being bullied because he was “different” is the same as mine. The sense of being called a faggot, a homosexual, and to understand that you have to survive in a world of hate and the world that treats the “other” differently, isn’t easy to do so. I live it every day, and as a fellow gay man in that sense, I understand it even more.

You have to fight and reclaim a lot, snatch even, and make your own terms to live and be respected for who you are. “How We Fight for Our Lives” by Saeed Jones is a memoir that has several layers to it. Of being gay. Of being a black man. Of growing up gay and black.

I loved how Saeed depended on books while growing up (just as I did) and I could see how that made him embrace his desire, till he reaches college and unleashes himself both, physically and mentally. This book is a collection of reflections of his life, of loves, and losses, but more than anything else, it is his relationship with his mother and grandmother that hit me hard. The detailed sexual experiences that are noted are needed for people to understand what goes on in a world different from theirs.

The honesty of the memoir is heartbreaking and often cuts through all prejudices. The language is emotional and makes you sit up and notice Jones’ life and the world in context. How We Fight for Our Lives is a memoir that is much needed in a time such as ours, to make us see that not everyone is the same, but everyone deserves the same respect, dignity, love, and the same opportunity irrespective of their orientation or skin colour.