Good Antifundy reading - novels, memoirs, etc

[Mela99]

I wanted to share and see if anybody else had good books on anti-fundie/anti-crazy cults/stories, etc.

 

I own Elissa Walls' book, and JesusLand, a really mindblowing memoir about Esuela Caribe, a religious camp...

 

Anybody have anything out there they want to add? Any thoughts on the books I have read?

[Sweetpea1]

Kathryn Joyce/ Quiverfull (nonfiction)

The Handmaid's Tale (fiction, and a good movie.)

[Guest Anonymous]

If you read the Elissa Walls book, you might like Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer about FLDS mormons.

[ElphabaGalinda]

I recently read The Unlikely Disciple and loved it. Very fascinating inside look at Liberty University, written by a liberal person trying to infiltrate the craziness.

[holierthanyou]

I second the Unlikely Disciple. In many ways I found it sympathetic to Fundy(light) youth, which surprised me. I definitely enjoyed it though.

[2xx1xy1JD]

"Moonwebs: Journey into the Mind of a Cult" by Josh Freed. The author's friend was recruited into the Moonies, and this is the tale of what they went through to get him out. It also delves into the Unification Church's structure and methods, and the author's experience at one of their recruitment camps that he attended while trying to locate his friend. There's an interesting section at the end, after the friend was deprogrammed, that looks at the psychological changes that take place in a cult, the attraction of cults and the larger issues of group dynamics and loss of individuality. A lot of the same themes and concepts apply to other groups.

[gimlet]

The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo. It's the story of a girl's break with her parents, who are involved in a brutal fundie cult but also New England backwoods people and cruel and nuts in their own right.

[gimlet]

Since the latest Maxwell engagement is bringing up comparisons between fundie and traditional arranged marriages, I thought I'd recommend Arranged, a 2007 movie that you can watch on Netflix streaming or DVD. It's NR because it was never released in theaters, but it only has 1 tiny bit of bad language and no sex in it. It's a great movie to watch with teenagers.

It's the story of two women in their early 20s who meet at work (a public school) and become friends. Rochel is an Orthodox Jew and Nasira is a Syrian Muslim. But they are both religious, and not close minded, and become friends because they both have issues integrating their faith and customs with the world outside their communities.

Oh, and each is of an age to get married and having an arranged marriage, and the movie is clear that even an arranged marriage has certain romantic and cultural pressures that make it as tough as any other way of finding a mate.

I also like Sabah: A Love Story, which is about a 40 year old woman from a conservative Muslim family living in Toronto. She's the unmarried daughter who takes care of her mother, who is in ill health, and sick of the narrowness of her life. So she buys a swimsuit and starts going to the co-ed open swim time at the local pool (clandestine! scandalous!) where she meets a nice guy and starts dating him. The film also looks at the other pressures that bear down on the rest of her family as they try to keep to their old country ways instead of assimilating--her niece is rebelling against an arranged marriage, her brother has the stress of making money to support the whole family, his younger wife is 2nd generation and doesn't speak Arabic or mesh well with the family. There are issues that get their resolution glossed over but who can resist a love story with an older heroine?

[Sweetpea1]

I'd second the movie Arranged. Loved the movie.

[JaChelle Sugar]

There's a couple good YA novels I read back in the day: 'I Am Not Esther' and 'Leaving Fishers'. Not 'Handmaid's Tale' level but good reads.