The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir
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About this ebook
The Inheritance of Shame is the true story of author Peter Gajdics' six years in a bizarre form of conversion therapy that attempted to "cure" him of his homosexuality. Virtually imprisoned in a cult-like therapeutic house called the Styx with other heavily medicated psychiatric patients, they were all under the total authority of a vio
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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Reviews for The Inheritance of Shame
5 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Peter 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.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 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.