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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

Review

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

SAVING ALEX, written by an abuse survivor, raises issues of parental control, adolescent misbehavior, adult power over minors, religious beliefs that allow cruel punishment of what is perceived as sin, and most significantly, what we can do to protect the rights of people who seek only to love whom they will.

Alex Cooper was raised by a Mormon mother and a father who was a Mormon convert. They all worshipped together in church and at home, and looked forward to the day when Alex and her siblings would marry, procreate, and assume roles in society that would guarantee their entrance, as a family, into heaven. But Alex destroyed that idyllic picture by admitting, when she was 15, that she liked girls rather than boys. Almost overnight she found herself living with a couple, Johnny and Tiana, who had children of their own but also oversaw "bad" children.

"Cooper's chronicle is surprisingly, some might say admirably, devoid of recrimination, and tacitly forgiving of the Mormon church policies and her own parents, who consigned a young girl to a crudely devised hell dominated by a deluded, sadistic couple."

Self-styled but unofficial foster parents with no training as counselors or religious mentors, the couple imposed harsh discipline of their own devising. Tiana worked as a security guard while Johnny stayed home, battling drug addiction and inflicting brutal beatings on any child who didn't obey him. Alex slept on the floor, cleaned the house and prepared meals (mostly ramen noodles). When she did not readily "confess" her "sins," she was forced to wear a backpack full of heavy stones at all times, and when that was not sufficient to get her to renounce her evil ways, she wore the backpack while standing staring at a wall --- all day long. Mormons and others came and went from the home, and no one ever asked why she was standing there. 

The terrified and lonely but unusually resourceful teen tried to pass notes to strangers in the community, attempted to starve herself, and once took a handful of Johnny's pills, trying to get away by any means. She often considered suicide. Her parents thought she was lying about her treatment, so they let her torture continue, assured by Tiana and Johnny that they could make her recant her lesbianism. Fortunately, Alex encountered a school group that supported the rights of LGBT teens; through their support, she finally won her freedom.

Cooper's chronicle is surprisingly, some might say admirably, devoid of recrimination, and tacitly forgiving of the Mormon church policies and her own parents, who consigned a young girl to a crudely devised hell dominated by a deluded, sadistic couple. With the aid of author Joanna Brooks, an expert on Mormonism and LGBT issues, Cooper describes in some detail the bias with which gay teens are often treated, not only by the Mormon religion but by society in general. Branded as “ungovernable,” they become subject to the harshest possible treatment allowable by law, or, in Alex’s case, outside legal bounds.

Cooper has rebuilt her life, is now openly gay and is involved in various social causes. She emphasizes the hopeful elements in her nightmarish experience: you are never alone; there is always help. Her book may inspire others to try to find that help.

Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott on March 30, 2016

Saving Alex: When I Was Fifteen I Told My Mormon Parents I Was Gay, and That's When My Nightmare Began
by Alex Cooper with Joanna Brooks

  • Publication Date: February 28, 2017
  • Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction
  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: HarperOne
  • ISBN-10: 0062374613
  • ISBN-13: 9780062374615