book recommendation for Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church
Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2019 3:28 pm
I read this over the holiday weekend . . . WOW. The author is the granddaughter of the church's founder. She was fully devout and for many years she was the Church's social media manager. The book describes her childhood (a lot of it is very hard to read because of the extreme, hateful positions of the church and she is unsparing in her descriptions of their activities) and her excruciating journey through the first stirrings of cognitive dissonance to actually being willing to face the hard questions. Ultimately, she leaves with a younger sister.
One of the things I really appreciated about her writing was her refusal to sensationalize any of the story. Of course it's dramatic enough to not need any sensationalization, but she refers to things like physical abuse (which the grandfather and then his children inflicted on their families) without dwelling on them. She also doesn't hesitate to admit that there was a lot of deep and genuine love among them -- I hadn't realized that this church is mostly populated by members of an extended family. Leaving the church meant complete renunciation and removal from her family and venturing forth into a world that, with reason, hated that family. It took a lot of courage.
The parallels with the experience of leaving Mormonism are no doubt obvious. But it wasn't for that alone that I loved loved loved this book. It's going to stand as one of my top reads this year. Have any of you read it yet? What did you think?
One of the things I really appreciated about her writing was her refusal to sensationalize any of the story. Of course it's dramatic enough to not need any sensationalization, but she refers to things like physical abuse (which the grandfather and then his children inflicted on their families) without dwelling on them. She also doesn't hesitate to admit that there was a lot of deep and genuine love among them -- I hadn't realized that this church is mostly populated by members of an extended family. Leaving the church meant complete renunciation and removal from her family and venturing forth into a world that, with reason, hated that family. It took a lot of courage.
The parallels with the experience of leaving Mormonism are no doubt obvious. But it wasn't for that alone that I loved loved loved this book. It's going to stand as one of my top reads this year. Have any of you read it yet? What did you think?