Book recommendations: Stories about leaving religion behind
June 28, 2019 5:55 PM   Subscribe

I am looking for book recommendations about the experience of being religious and leaving. For example, growing up in a strictly observant family but then leaving at some point. I prefer personal experiences but I'm open to all types of books on this subject. Thanks!
posted by emmatrotsky to Grab Bag (19 answers total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
From an Orthodox Jewish perspective:
All Who Go Do Not Return by Shulem Deen
and Abby Stein's book Becoming Eve doesn't come out until later this year but she's brilliant and I expect her book will be great.
posted by needs more cowbell at 6:03 PM on June 28, 2019


Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels, by Hella Winston.
posted by holborne at 6:07 PM on June 28, 2019


Check out When I Spoke in Tongues by Jessica Wilibanks
posted by gnutron at 6:20 PM on June 28, 2019


Educated By Tara Westover - excellent, recent, popular memoir about growing up in a Mormon fundamentalist (and survivalist) family.
posted by mskyle at 6:32 PM on June 28, 2019 [12 favorites]


Leaving the Witness is an account from a former Jehovah's Witness that I've been meaning to read.
posted by duvatney at 6:39 PM on June 28, 2019


I Leap Over the Wall, by Monica Baldwin. I liked it when I read it but it was decades ago; no promise that it's aged well.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:40 PM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]


I haven't read Amber Scorah's Leaving the Witness, but I thought this Fresh Air interview with her was fantastic. It may give you a sense of whether you'd be interested in reading her memoir.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:41 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]


Karen Armstrong's”through the narrow gate” tells of her life as a Roman Catholic nun, her experience with epilepsy and leaving the order.
posted by five_cents at 7:02 PM on June 28, 2019 [5 favorites]




Not a book, but The New Yorker recently ran this personal essay called Losing Religion and Finding Ecstasy in Houston.
posted by Leontine at 7:50 PM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]




A queer and pleasant danger (subtitle: The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today)
posted by nuclear_soup at 5:34 AM on June 29, 2019


Not a novel, but Naomi Alderman had an article in the Guardian last year about why she wrote her novel Disobedience, later made into a film. She says it wasn't clear to her until years later that Disobedience is less of a gay love story and more of a leaving religion narrative.
posted by glasseyes at 6:06 AM on June 29, 2019


Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After my Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood, by Leah Vincent. It's very much about the aftermath of leaving.
posted by gideonfrog at 8:00 AM on June 29, 2019


Many of the essays in Louise Antony, ed., Philosophers without Gods, discuss loss of religious faith.
posted by brianogilvie at 10:52 AM on June 29, 2019


That is definitely one of the themes of Craig Thompson's Blankets.
posted by gudrun at 12:15 PM on June 29, 2019


It's fiction, but The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwan deals with this topic.
posted by toby_ann at 1:06 PM on July 3, 2019


Another vote for Educated by Tarra Westover. Also, have a look at Pure by Linda Kay Klein. Klein grew up in the 1990s evangelical purity movement, and her book relates the experiences of several women who struggled to make sense of womanhood in that context.
posted by Nerdy Spice at 4:17 PM on July 15, 2019


I'm really late to this, but Jeanette Winterson's Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal?.
posted by paduasoy at 4:58 PM on January 21, 2020


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