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    Saving Alex: When I Was Fifteen I Told My Mormon Parents I Was Gay, and That's When My Nightmare Began
    Unavailable
    Saving Alex: When I Was Fifteen I Told My Mormon Parents I Was Gay, and That's When My Nightmare Began
    Unavailable
    Saving Alex: When I Was Fifteen I Told My Mormon Parents I Was Gay, and That's When My Nightmare Began
    Ebook303 pages4 hours

    Saving Alex: When I Was Fifteen I Told My Mormon Parents I Was Gay, and That's When My Nightmare Began

    By Alex Cooper and Joanna Brooks

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    When Alex Cooper was fifteen years old, life was pretty ordinary in her sleepy suburban town and nice Mormon family. At church and at home, Alex was taught that God had a plan for everyone. But something was gnawing at her that made her feel different. These feelings exploded when she met Yvette, a girl who made Alex feel alive in a new way, and with whom Alex would quickly fall in love.

    Alex knew she was holding a secret that could shatter her family, her church community, and her life. Yet when this secret couldn’t be hidden any longer, she told her parents that she was gay, and the nightmare began. She was driven from her home in Southern California to Utah, where, against her will, her parents handed her over to fellow Mormons who promised to save Alex from her homosexuality.

    For eight harrowing months, Alex was held captive in an unlicensed “residential treatment program” modeled on the many “therapeutic” boot camps scattered across Utah. Alex was physically and verbally abused, and many days she was forced to stand facing a wall wearing a heavy backpack full of rocks. Her captors used faith to punish and terrorize her. With the help of a dedicated legal team in Salt Lake City, Alex eventually escaped and made legal history in Utah by winning the right to live under the law’s protection as an openly gay teenager.

    Alex is not alone; the headlines continue to splash stories about gay conversion therapy and rehabilitation centers that promise to “save” teenagers from their sexuality. Saving Alex is a courageous memoir that tells Alex’s story in the hopes that it will bring awareness and justice to this important issue. A bold, inspiring story of one girl’s fight for freedom, acceptance, and truth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 1, 2016
    ISBN9780062374622
    Author

    Alex Cooper

    Alex Cooper made legal history in Utah by winning the right to live under the law’s protection as an openly gay teenager. Now twenty-one, she lives in Portland, Oregon.

    Read more from Alex Cooper

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    Reviews for Saving Alex

    4/5

    40 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This was a really compelling read. Though I don't think this is Brooks's best writing, Alex and her story draw you in and don't let you go. Two days of few breaks. What hit me the hardest was realizing that Alex is younger than I am. I knew this was a recent story, but I've read a lot of memoirs and they are all by people older than me, so that was the mindset I was reading this book with. But no. She's about the age of my younger brother. This was just a couple years ago, and conversion therapy is still very much a thing in Utah.LGBT issues are divisive within the Mormon church. Alex wrote her story mostly for kids like her who know deep down that they're not broken, but this book also has the potential to soften some hearts. There is power in listening to the stories of individuals we lump into general groups. I was impressed with the charity Alex had toward her parents' beliefs and where those beliefs came from. While I'm sure hurt and anger were and probably still are there, she doesn't blame her parents. She stresses how important it was for them to believe in a plan where everything would be alright in the end. When Alex didn't fit that plan, her parents had to find a way to make things right. Letting go of the plan you have clung to for your whole life is hard and painful, and it's easier to try to get the people you love to fit back into the plan; after all, they used to fit, they can fit again. Throughout the book Alex does an excellent job of understanding and helping the reader understand her parents' worldview. This is an important read.Minor nitpick: I can't stand the click-bait-y subtitle.
    • 5/5
      There are so many reasons why this is such an important book and story!I have such an emotional attachment to Alex's story being from Utah and having grown up involved in the Mormon religion. While I personally didn't face any of her circumstances I know people who have to some degree. It's so important for people to hear her story and to understand that this IS happening! It's important too, to understand that there can be a happy ending. For anyone who may be going through feelings of doubt, shame, or suicide because they are LGBTQ, in a religious and unaccepting family, please read this book along with any other story you can get your hands on of survivors! It gets better, and that's why Alex told her story! Not only to shine a light on the abuse and torture of conversion therapy, but to also show people that it can get better!I hope that this book makes its way into so many peoples hands! People in the LDS faith who may not quite understand LGBTQ, people struggling to accept their homosexuality, parents with homosexual children, and anyone else. Thank you Alex for sharing your story, however hard it must have been to relive your horrible circumstances.
    • 4/5
      This was a very distressing book. I could feel myself trembling with the emotions of reading this book multiple times. It is also a book that is very very hard to put down. Not because I was thrilled or excited but because I just couldn't put the book down without seeing the resolution, without seeing that Alex was safe. I didn't feel good knowing I was going to read this book, I didn't feel good while reading it and I don't feel good, now, after having read it. But sometimes you have to read books like this. They open your eyes. They are evidence of how our world shifts and changes and how one case or one voice can help make those shifts happen. Having said all that, I struggled a little with this book on a different level, a writer-reader level. This was a retelling of something horrible, and I felt the horror, but I felt that there was a big lack of emotional connection here. I fully understand why this happened the way it did: Writing about something like this would be and was very emotionally difficult for the author and her ghost writer. That made the book come out with 'all tell and no show', as us writers like to phrase it. I think this happens often, when the point of the book is that it's message is more important that it's format. Nothing wrong with it, but it makes for a different type or reading. One I'm not keen on doing very often. Anyways, anyone can relate to this book I think, but some people more than others might take a lot from this if they gave it a chance.
    • 5/5
      Inspiring! A true pioneer! What amazing people who helped her. It's difficult to see how so many people could be blind about abusive actions taking place right under their noses and even encouraging it.