Book review: My Son, Beloved Stranger by Carrol Grady

heavy spoilers throughout I guess

One of my tasks as a reference librarian is looking over the new books that are processed and ready to be shelved. One of them was My Son, Beloved Stranger by Carrol Grady. It is about an Adventist mother who is devastated when she learns her son is gay. She and the rest of the family struggle with this new side of their son as well as what others might think, their church's beliefs about gay people, and the looming threat of AIDS. The family eventually comes to accept their son and his sexuality.

MS,BS was based on the author's personal experiences, and I believe the feelings and experiences are very similar to, if not exactly, what happened. It was originally published in 1995 under a pseudonym (visible on the book cover above-left). The writing was, in my opinion, somewhat flowery and dramatic, with some unnecessary details. I do think this book was and probably still is very important for SDA parents of LGBT+ children, as at the time it was published there was little to no literature or visible support around this issue (from/by/to the Adventist church).

While I understand this book was written specifically for parents who might be blindsided by their child coming out to them and what that might entail for their religious beliefs, I thought that it made the son's being gay all about his family, especially his mother. The parents did worry about whether their son Danny would be fired for his orientation (he was a K-12 teacher), or if he would be beat up or ostracized, or if he would get AIDS, but most of their worries seemed to be about their own situations. The parents worried about what other people might think of them and leaned on their son to stay in the closet. The mother mourned the loss of the "straight" son she knew and was crushed that her son would not be able to marry and have children. She was also extremely worried that she or her husband had been responsible for her son's gayness: she and Danny had always been very close (the smothering mother theory), and her husband was a missionary pastor and was often gone for the better part of the year (the distant/absent father theory). She felt like she couldn't talk to anyone about it out of shame, seeing herself as being in the closet as the parent of a gay son, and she sank into a deep depression. Her husband was no help because he, in denial, insisted that Danny was just going through a phase and needed to snap out of it.

I suppose it is a testament to how much things have changed in society at large, my own worldview, and even the Adventist church when it comes to LGBT+ people, but I confess I was rather surprised at how hard Danny's parents took everything. When the mother learned about her son being gay, she started screaming and sobbing and punching the walls so hard she hurt herself. I've already mentioned her deep depression. The father was in denial and refused to reevaluate his worldview or listen to his son. At some point, Danny moved in with his brother and sister-in-law because of the difficulties he was having with his parents. All of this just seemed so extra to me. They were seriously reacting as if their son had been murdered, or as if he had turned out to be a serial rapist or something. And this was from Christian parents who loved their son! I was like secondhand offended at all the homophobia and narrow-mindedness.

After Danny broke off his engagement to a nice girl his parents loved, his mother started remembering all these super gay things he did as a young child, such as being really happy when his female friend let him be the mommy when playing house, saying he was going to be a ballerina when he grew up, begging his mother for  a twirly skirt and then twirling around in it, loving music and art and hating sports and cars, etc. All that and she had no idea?? To be honest, that's pretty stereotypical and imo more indicative of someone being a trans girl than a gay guy, but whatever. I was also deeply amused when Danny's dad said that all teenage guys experience feelings for their guy friends due to hormones. Like what??? Sounds like dad is bi!

Anyway, the book ends with Danny, a couple of failed relationships under his belt, telling his mother that he's going to be celibate from now on and is joining an Anglican church, and she rejoices. The author wrote an afterword that included a more affirming viewpoint for LGBT+ people (i.e. the gays don't have to be celibate to be accepted by their church/God). Overall, I think this book might be helpful for Adventist parents of LGBT+ children, as well as people studying the acceptance of LGBT+ people in the SDA denomination or Christianity in general. I don't think I'd recommend this to LGBT+ people themselves, as the negative viewpoints and situations might be triggering to them. Ultimately, this is a book for straight people, and while some might use it to pat themselves on the back for being so accepting, it might help others, especially the more traditionally minded, to become more accepting themselves. However, a lot of change has happened in the last 20+ years, and there are better books out there, such as Justin Lee's book Torn.

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: late April
From: the library
Format: paperback
Status: still at the library obvs

EDIT: if you're interested in this book/topic, read this article by Mrs. Grady where she looks back over the 30 years since her son came out and inspired MS,BS. Very interesting.

April-June 2017 books

The first book I read in April was Ella Minnow Pea: A progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable by Mark Dunn. This is one of the most unique books I’ve ever read because as the book goes on, it keeps using words with fewer and fewer letters. It’s also a fable with a moral in it. In a fictitious? island off the coast of South Carolina, a charmingly retro town adores its statue of a hometown boy made good: the guy who invented the phrase “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”, which is mounted on his statue. When the letters begin to fall off the decaying statue, the superstitious (or enterprising?) town elders decide it is a message from beyond the grave that the entire island must give up using that letter from the alphabet. You can imagine what happens when more and more letters keep dropping from the statue, and the faster they fall, the more outrageous and rapacious the demands on the townspeople become. This book made me angry because I could see a clear parallel between the “devout” town elders, who really just wanted a reason to take others’ houses and property, and current events. Clever, creative, sweet and mirroring our times: highly recommended. 4/5

Ellen White’s World: A fascinating look at the times in which she lived is the third book from George R. Knight’s Ellen White series. It’s basically a sweeping overview of the nineteenth century’s religious and cultural aspects, with a few EGW quotes thrown in to tie it to the Adventist prophet and writer. I had to read this for a class and found this book interesting, but I thought Ellen White’s World should have included more on the prophet herself and not kept to such an insanely short page length. 3.9/5

Bee: The Princess of the Dwarfs by Anatole France is a classic old-fashioned fairytale about a princess and her cousin/betrothed who, as children, wander from home and get kidnapped by dwarves and nixies, respectively. It was a nice story but very short, and I felt like it could have been fleshed out more. The ending was also kind of meh because there wasn’t any sort of climactic battle; the kids end up being freed by the king of the dwarfs because he loves Honeybee. Yes, that’s her nickname; not sure why they didn’t just put Honeybee instead of Bee in the title. I mostly liked this anyway. This was a Nook ebook. 3.4/5

Another Nook ebook that I read was A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe, which was a Gothic Romance. Secret passageways and tunnels below a castle, possible ghosts, tons of chases, heroine is constantly fainting and needing to be rescued, several faked deaths, a corrupt abbot, a band of thieves, caves, forced marriages and true love. A fun trip. 3/5

I guess I was in the mood for Gothic novels since after that I read Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Carmilla, which has been adapted into a YouTube video series, is the OG lesbian vampire who preys on pretty young women, hilariously changing her name to another anagram as the decades pass (Marcilla etc.). As with most if not all classic vampire novels, it ends with the hunting and elimination of the vampire threat. Even going in with full knowledge of what friendships between girls were like in Victorian times, this was super gay. It ended pretty abruptly (I guess a lot of novels from this period do), but I liked it anyway; it was pretty funny. 3.5/5

Technically I finished this book in July but I mostly read it in June, so I’m going to include it in here anyway. Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-v.s.-Christians Debate by Justin Lee is an excellent book about how we should view and treat gay Christians and gay people in general, and how our church should change its view of homosexuality and how it treats those in the LGBT+ spectrum if it wants to repair relationships rather than cause pain. This was excellent; highly recommended. I honestly feel like every Christian should read this regardless of their orientation and opinion. 4.9/5

Unsung Hero[in]es: In the Bible, What Did Women Do?

The Seventh-day Adventist Church, among many other Christian denominations, has been going through the issue of whether or not women should be ordained as pastors. There are already women pastors, my aunt among them, but millennia of patriarchal misogyny and male gender bias are hard to shake off. The senior pastor at my church, LLUC, has done a sermon series about some of the women leaders of the Bible in order to see what they and their roles may have to teach us about the topic of women's ordination. I wanted to write down the messages in order to remember them.

1. Deborah: Here Comes the Judge! (sermon video) – Don't limit the way God chooses to work. Don't think that God can or should only work in one specific way.
2. Huldah: Prophet to the King (video) – I think this one is something like, Listen to what God is saying regardless of who He's saying it through. God chooses to speak through whomever He wants. God's message is vital regardless of whoever is saying it, even if it's someone you wouldn't expect.
3. Miriam: In the Leadership Circle (video) – "Unsung heroes can have feet of clay." God can speak or work through flawed people. Just because a person is flawed, doesn't mean that God can't work through them or choose them to be leaders. Moses also made mistakes and was flawed, but people don't point to him and say that men shouldn't be leaders because of him. (I almost fistpumped in church when he said this. I definitely made that "sips tea" face)
4. Esther: Living with the If (video) – This sermon was given by a woman. The story of Esther should be sung and remembered because it shows us how to trust in God despite uncertainty and place our lives in His hands. We need to stand up for what's right despite our fear.
5. Priscilla and Junia: The Apostles' Colleagues – Today's church should look like the early church, with both women and men in its leadership and playing important roles.
6. Next week is Mary: A Woman's Place. Not sure yet which Mary it is.

I have loved this sermon series, not only because of the crumbs of representation for women that there is in the Bible and the way this shines a light on women leaders (even fewer crumbs for them), but because this is one of the ways my quiet, prefers-not-to-ruffle-feathers pastor shows support for women's ordination: by preaching from the Bible, the same place opponents of women's ordination turn to. This is simultaneously an ordinary sermon series on Bible characters and a Scriptures-supported feminist endorsement of women's ordination. I see you and I thank you.

Adventists are the original hipsters.

Oh, we were vegetarian/vegan before that was trendy.
We knew smoking was bad for you before it was widespread medical knowledge. We knew it all along thanks to Sister White.
I grew up on Arthur Maxwell's children's stories. Oh, you've never heard of them? Non-Adventists usually haven't.
Jewelry/coffee drinking is too mainstream worldly.
POTLUCKS LOL AMIRITE. Yeah, it's an Adventist thing; you probably wouldn't understand.
My favorite food is wheat gluten/Ceder Lake products/Fri Chik/Special K casserole/etc. Mmmm, Roma. I'm totally craving carob chips right now!
We live longer than everyone else because of our awesome lifestyles. My grandma is 134 years old and still goes to church 3 times a week/volunteers everywhere/lifts weights/runs marathons.
Kellogg's has Adventist roots. That's right, breakfast exists because of us.
Round Communion wafers and wine are so mainstream. We have square crackers and grape juice.
What am I listening to? They're the Heritage Singers; you've probably never heard of them.
You're eating a bacon sandwich at McDonalds??? Bourgeois sheep BADVENTIST!!!
Going to church on Sunday is too mainstream. Saturday church-going is where it's at. Everyone else is wrong; we have the TRUTH.
We did that whole "JESUS IS COMING ON THE 22ND!!!!! Oh, psych, He didn't come after all... It's because we didn't count right/a spiritual judgment not visible to us here on earth happened instead!" first, before Harold Campbell and all those other posers.

What Seventh-day Adventists believe
Hipster definition from Urban Dictionary