When I was five years old, my father became a born-again Christian. It’s not a time I like to remember, because my father embraced a form of evangelicalism which taught that men were ordained by God to be head of the household and that women were inferior. Like many evangelical women, I was taught not…
Deirdre Sugiuchi
My Former Reform School Is In the News Again
Last month Jesus Land author Julia Scheeres, forwarded me a link from ProPublica with a headline that made of us both infuriated. There Were Warning Signs Of Sexual Abuse At a Youth Center. Indiana Kept Sending Boys and Money Anyway. No one wants teenagers to be abused, especially at state-funded Christian facilities, but it was beyond maddening…
A User’s Guide to Unreformed/ Moving to Substack
Thank you to everyone who read my Unreformed blog. I’m starting a substack which will occasionally focus on the troubled teen industry but also will include outtakes from my interviews (the next three are Darrin Bell, Emi Nietfield, and Myriam Gurba), what I’m reading, and what I’m researching— I’m currently working on a project exploring…
Fahrenheit 2023: Even in Mississippi’s segregation academies, we learned about Emmett Till
I wrote about learning about Emmett Till in my Mississippi Delta segregationist academy, book banning, recent attacks on Black history, and learning the truth over at Salon. Big thanks to David Mura for encouraging me to write this, to Pen America for their coverage of book banning, to Kiese Laymon and Jesmyn Ward for writing…
Conversion Therapy Is Abuse…or Why Discourse Surrounding Care for Trans Kids Matters
Yesterday the author Alexander Chee and nearly 200 other writers signed an open letter to the NYTimes addressing their concerns about how the Times covers trans issues, particularly in regards to discourse debating the propriety of medical care for trans children. The full text of the letter is linked here…but a key point is that…
RUN TOWARDS THE DANGER
I’ve been reading Sarah Polley’s RUN TOWARDS THE DANGER. The title essay feels like it was written for people, who, like me, have experienced a traumatic injury. IN RUN TOWARDS THE DANGER, Polley, who is Canadian, travels to America to consult with a doctor about a concussion which has lingered for four years. He tells…
2022 Interviews
I always knew I wanted to be a writer, but after I was sent to reform school, I didn’t write for a decade. I have a tricky relationship with writing— at the school I was punished for what I wrote in my letters home. They would make me rewrite my letters over and over. I…
On Dana Spiotta’s Wayward, Blue Bubbles, & Hobby Lobby America
I love Dana Spiotta, and loved every minute of the conversation we had a few weeks ago for Electric Lit (pub date July 27th) about her new book Wayward, which is about a white liberal Gen X woman upending her life in response to the 2016 election. Along the way Spiotta skewers liberal white women…
Reading Caste, Watching This Is Paris, and #BreakingCodeSilence
Monday night I watched the Paris Hilton documentary, This Is Paris, which in part deals with Paris Hilton’s time at the troubled teen facility Provo Canyon. I’m still kind of unsettled, which surprised me, mainly because I have spent so long writing about and researching these programs. A large part of my book, Unreformed, traces…
Shield Athens
Sometime after September 11th, I went back to the Delta to visit my grandfather Waters Hicks. My son had been born in August of that year and I wanted my grandfather to meet him. Also, I realize now, that even though I have effectively exiled myself from the Delta, I tend to go back to…