Teaching the Cat to Sit: A Memoir by Michelle Theall; Gallery Books, $24.99
It doesn't take too much imagination to contemplate how intimidating it would be to grow up as a lesbian Catholic in the Texas Bible Belt during the 1970s and 80s. Yet in her captivating self-actualization memoir, Michelle Theall has fashioned more than an enthralling, at times hilarious account of her experiences. From her unique vantage point, she has written a personal post-Stonewall history of what it has been like to grow up gay in America in the last 40 years, ranging from total denial to self-loathing to seeking salvation in therapy to dating men, and finally to a healthy acceptance of her sexual identity.
Catholicism serves as a foil for her desire to win her parents' love if she can win the Church's approval of her nontraditional family (she co-parents her four-year-old adopted half-Cambodian son, Connor, with her life partner, Jill). Her parents don't understand her lifestyle. After she tells them she is a lesbian, they banish her from their house and their lives for years. Her mother, in all her Grand Guignol horror, is poignantly etched as a needy, depressed strict Catholic who blames Michelle for all her problems and uses guilt as a tool of control as skillfully as a surgeon wields a scalpel. Some of her comments are outrageous, such as suggesting AIDS is God's wrath against homosexuals. Other conversations are cruel: after reading an article written by Michelle on her family's entanglements with Catholicism, her mother screams at her, "Why do you have to broadcast you're gay? Your sister doesn't run around telling everyone she's heterosexual. No one wants to hear your story. You're not a celebrity. Who cares? Who's even going to read this?" The bulk of Theall's memoir is coming to terms with her mom from hell, who throws fits and emotionally abuses Michelle. Finally, mom does arrive at a modicum of begrudging acceptance by giving Michelle a sterling silver chain with an amulet, etched with the words, "We are shaped by what we love."
As tortured as is her relationship with her mother, Michelle faces many other obstacles on her journey towards pride and self-acceptance. She is raped at 11 by her best friend's father. She is diagnosed with MS in 2003, and writes, "Then I did what every sane person who has been diagnosed with a progressive neurological disease would do: I booked a trip to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro." She is bullied by her fellow high school students after being outed even before she kisses another girl, and publically humiliated as she is kicked out of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. No matter how much discrimination or alienation are heaped upon her, she gets back up, ready to fight again. She is willing to expose her own flaws and uncertainties, yet reveals her amazing strength and perseverance.
The baptism of Connor, in the liberal Catholic church of Boulder, Colorado, is done in secret, the gay equivalent of segregation, rather than be celebrated as a community event at the regular Sunday mass. This becomes the spark that ignites her transformation. Her story becomes a quest for unconditional love from her parents, her congregation, but mostly from herself. When her local priest decides to expel Connor and all the children of gay parents, who he says are living immoral lifestyles in contradiction to church teaching, Michelle must battle her own shame, insecurities, and ambivalent history concerning the church as she struggles with the question, How can a child be blamed for who his parents are?
In the ongoing evolution of her faith, Michelle leaves Catholicism in 2010 to find a UCC Protestant community that loves her for who she really is, and remains true to her principles in the face of adversity. Michelle's transparency, vulnerability, honesty, and bravery make Teaching the Cat to Sit one of the best LGBT memoirs of the year.