The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir

Read the book that's getting conversion therapy banned in CanadaWinner 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 FOUNDATIONAll 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.Author: Peter GajdicsPublisher: Brown Paper PressPublished: 05/16/2017Pages: 352Binding Type: PaperbackWeight: 0.75lbsSize: 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.80dISBN: 9781941932087Review Citation(s): Foreword 03/26/2017Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2017About the AuthorGajdics, Peter: - Peter Gajdics 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.