Given Up for You - (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiog) by Erin O White (Hardcover)

About the Book

A candid and revelatory memoir of simultaneously falling in love with the Catholic faith and with another woman.

Book Synopsis

In this candid and revelatory memoir, Erin O. White shares her hunger for both romantic and divine love, and how these desires transformed her life. In the late 1990s, she spent Saturday nights with her girlfriend and Sunday mornings in Catholic confirmation classes. But when the Church closed its doors to her, she was faced with a question: What does a lesbian believer do with her longing for God? Given Up for You explores these yearnings with bittersweet conviction, plumbing the depths of heart and soul.

Review Quotes

"A testament to the struggle to reconcile desire and belief, and a poignant reminder of what's lost when a church refuses to open its doors wide. In beautiful prose, White shares her grief and longing for a faith denied, and in that telling claims a wholeness that was hers all along."
--Sarah Sentilles, author of Breaking Up with God

"A wonderful book about the blessings--and burdens--of love, both spiritual and carnal. In White's heart, there may be no act more subversive than surrender, no prayer more devout than desire itself. Joyful, erotic, and contemplative. A miracle!"
--Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She's Not There

"Reckoning with the rival claims of queer desire and Catholic faith, Erin O. White has written that rare and wonderful thing: an intimately personal page-turner that raises complex questions about the wider world and our future in it."
--Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks

"In this tender, unsentimental and powerfully honest story, Erin O. White writes of a real life shaped by longing for God. Her prose shines, and her devotion burns: she reveals, in an utterly contemporary context, what Gregory of Nyssa saw in the fourth century: God creates life; life beholds beauty; beauty begets love; love is the life of God. A wonderful book."--Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion and City of God

"With grace, wit, humor, and raw honesty, White gives us a story that wounds, entices, makes the reader want to say, Oh, yes, me too. This is a book for everyone who has been on a journey of love and longing. An important work."--Rilla Askew, author of Most American

About the Author

Erin O. White is a writing instructor and author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Portland Magazine, and several anthologies, most recently The Bitch Is Back: Older, Wiser, and (Getting) Happier. A native of Colorado, she lives in Massachusetts with her wife and daughters.