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    The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir
    The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir
    The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir
    Ebook455 pages6 hours

    The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir

    By Peter Gajdics

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    Read the book that's getting conversion therapy banned in Canada


    Winner of the Independent Book Publisher Award, Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction and the Saints and Sinners Emerging Writer Award.

    "Unforgettable... This book is appallingly appropriate in these times." — FOREWORD REVIEWS

    This resonant and acclaimed memoir recounts the six years that the author spent in a bizarre form of conversion therapy that attempted to "cure" him of his homosexuality, and the inspiring story of how he cast out shame and reclaimed his life.

    Kept with other patients in a cult-like home in British Columbia, Canada, Peter Gajdics was under the authority of a dominating, rogue psychiatrist who controlled his patients, in part, by creating and exploiting a false sense of family. Juxtaposed against his parents' tormented past–his mother's incarceration and escape from a communist concentration camp in post-World War II Yugoslavia, and his father's upbringing as an orphan in war-torn Hungary, The Inheritance of Shame explores the universal themes of childhood trauma, oppression, and intergenerational pain.

    “DEEPLY MOVING." — THE ADVOCATE

    “RAW AND UNFLINCHING" — KIRKUS REVIEWS

    “A HERO’S JOURNEY IN WHICH ANY READER, GAY OR STRAIGHT, CAN FIND INSPIRATION.” — LAMBDA LITERARY FOUNDATION

    All over the United States and Canada, districts, cities and states are banning conversion, ex-gay and reparative therapies. A powerful example of "healing through memoir," this book offers the most complete and compelling reason for those bans to date. A groundbreaking memoir, The Inheritance of Shame offers insights into overcoming all kinds of shame, especially that which has trickled down from previous generations, and into the complicated but all-too-worthwhile process of forgiveness.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrown Paper Press
    Release dateApr 26, 2020
    ISBN9781941932094
    The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir
    Author

    Peter Gajdics

    Peter Gajdics (pronounced "Guy-ditch") is an award-winning writer whose essays, short memoir and poetry have appeared in, among others, The Advocate, New York Tyrant, The Gay and Lesbian Review / Worldwide, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Opium. He is a recipient of a writers grant from Canada Council for the Arts, a fellowship from The Summer Literary Seminars, and an alumni of Lambda Literary Foundation's "Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices." When not in Budapest, Hungary, his home away from home, Peter lives in Vancouver, Canada. This is his first book.

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    • 5/5
      Peter Gajdics’ memoir documents his six-year journey through, and eventually out of, a particularly bizarre sort of therapy; the legal battle with his former psychiatrist; his complicated family history; and his attempts to reclaim his self-identity and his own story. The story is intensely personal and written with an LGBTQ audience in mind, but Gajdics tells it with such honesty and forgiveness that its themes transcend gender and sexuality. The book could also appeal to anyone interested in family conflicts, trauma and recovery, psychology, cults, and even 20th Century European history.
    • 5/5
      The Inheritance of Shame details the six years author Peter Gajdics spent in a bizarre form of conversion therapy that attempted to “cure” him of his homosexuality. Kept with other patients in a cult-like home in British Columbia, Canada, Gajdics was under the authority of a dominating, rogue psychiatrist who controlled his patients, in part, by creating and exploiting a false sense of family. Juxtaposed against his parents’ tormented past — his mother’s incarceration and escape from a communist concentration camp in post-World War II Yugoslavia, and his father’s upbringing as an orphan in war-torn Hungary — Gajdics’ story explores the universal themes of childhood trauma, oppression, and intergenerational pain. Told over a period of decades, the book shows us the damaging repercussions of conversion therapy and reminds us that resilience, compassion, and the courage to speak the truth exist within us all.

    Book preview

    The Inheritance of Shame - Peter Gajdics

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