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CW: suicide, (internalized) homophobia, self-harm
The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily Danforth saved my life in a very literal sense.
I read it for the first time the summer after my freshman year of college. I came across it in a time of desperation––when I was struggling with self-acceptance and battling near constant suicidal ideation. Two years before, at the end of my junior year of high school, I had attempted suicide when I realized that no matter hard I tried, I couldn’t will myself to be straight. Even after my attempt, I still tried to change myself. I dated guys that I cared for but could never really be with and hoped that with enough time, I could figure it out. And then, I [officially] came out to my family for a second time, and tried to learn to love myself with little success.
I found The Miseducation of Cameron Post in an online list of books by and about Queer people and went to find it at the local Barnes and Noble. I’d never read a book that had been openly about LGBTQ+ people, never seen myself represented so openly through an author. But what I found in Miseducation was more than representation––it was a validation of my life experiences like I’d never known.
[Spoiler Alert] The title character of the book, Cameron Post, was someone I could truly see myself in. She was a swimmer, a tomboy, obsessive about movies, and someone who was struggling to understand her identity in a world that rarely acknowledged that people like her existed. When she was outed in high school, her uber-religious guardians sent her away to conversion therapy camp to be healed.
While my story didn’t line up shot for shot with Cameron’s, the similarities were overwhelming to me: I knew what it was like to grow up in a world that glossed over the existence of queer people at best. I knew what it was like to be outed before you were ready. And I knew what it was like to feel the sting of religious persecution from the people I thought were meant to protect me.
Sometimes I wonder what my youth would have been like had I read The Miseducation of Cameron Post at sixteen. Would I have continued to seek out relationships, often in dangerous settings, with boys to “fix” myself? Would I have continued to self-harm to punish myself for my inability to change? Would I have swallowed those pills in a hope to put an end to my sins for good?
The truth is, I don’t know. But I have to think knowing that I wasn’t alone would have helped.
If leaders in my home state of Oklahoma have their way, books like Miseducation would be banned from schools. While it’s not on the current list, I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before this title is added to the growing pile of books to be tossed into the fire. There are other books––books I wish I’d known about or had accessible as a student that are on that list. Books like Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan and Queer by Kathy Beige and Marke Bieschke that I’ve kept on my shelf my entire teaching career to give kids like me something to hold onto when the rest of the world feels like too much.