Audiobook LGBT Nonfiction

Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing

Name: Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing
Rating: 3.42 (10 reviews)
Author: Lauren Hough

Lauren Hough

3.42 10.5k Ratings

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Synopsis

Searing and extremely personal essays from the heart of working-class America, shot through with the darkest elements the country can manifest–cults, homelessness, and hunger–while discovering light and humor in unexpected corners.

As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe–to Germany, Japan, Texas, Ecuador–but it wasn’t until her mother finally walked away that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond “The Family.”

Along the way, she’s loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next. She’s taken pilgrimages to the sights of her youth, been kept in solitary confinement, dated a lot of women, dabbled in drugs, and eventually found herself as what she always wanted to be: a writer. Here, as she sweeps through the underbelly of America–relying on friends, family, and strangers alike–she begins to excavate a new identity even as her past continues to trail her and color her world, relationships, and perceptions of self.

At once razor-sharp, profoundly brave, and often very, very funny, the essays in Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing interrogate our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely. Each piece is a reckoning: of survival, identity, and how to reclaim one’s past when carving out a future.

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Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing

Books similar to Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing

All Boys Aren’t Blue

No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters

Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories

Me Talk Pretty One Day

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex

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