Brad talks with Deirdre Sugiuchi about her story of leaving a fundamentalist boot camp in the Dominican Republic. Deirdre, a writer whose work has been featured at Electric Literature, Guernica, and who contributed an essay to EMPTY THE PEWS, speaks of the emotional and sexual abuse at Escuela Caribe and the dangers she sees in the current administration's approach to religious education. *WARNING: This episode does contain descriptions of sexual abuse. \
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AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY Well, welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi.
I am Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College, and I am thrilled to be joined today by Deirdre Sugiuchi, who is a writer and actually wears a couple of different hats.
But before we get there, I want to just say we are going to be talking about her essay that appears in a new book called Empty the Pews, Stories of Leaving the Church.
And that's edited by Chrissy Stroop, who's been on our show twice now, and Lauren O'Neill.
And in that book, you'll find essays from ex-evangelicals, Mormons, and others who have really found their way out of fundamentalist, and in some cases, abusive religious communities.
Well, we are lucky enough to have a couple of copies to give away, and so if you are interested in putting yourself in the running to win a copy of Empty the Pews, go over to our Facebook page, the Straight White American Jesus Facebook page, or our Twitter, Straight White JC, and there you'll find a survey you can take and some other ways that you can kind of put your name in the hat to receive one of those copies.
With that said, I'm really thrilled to be joined by Deirdre Sugiuchi, and she is a very accomplished human being.
She is at the moment finishing her memoir about fundamentalist boot camp.
It's called Unreformed, and it takes place at the Escuela Caribe, which we're going to talk about today.
Her work has been featured in a lot of places.
Electric Literature, Guernica, The Rumpus, Shondaland.
And as I just mentioned in this new anthology, Empty the Pews, a recipient of the Mark Austin Segura Award for Nonfiction.
She lives in Athens, Georgia, where until recently you were a public school librarian.
And so you are and have always been a very busy person, but you've been kind enough to join us.
So thanks for being here!
I'm so thrilled, thank you!
Yeah, so as I mentioned, you're finishing your memoir, Unreformed, and today we really just, you know, want to talk about your story.
You have a pretty remarkable story.
It's in some ways, I think, a pretty extreme set of experiences that you had with Fundamentalist Christianity.
And so, from what I understand, and I've read a bunch of your work, a lot of that started when your dad kind of had this major conversion when you were like five years old.
And that really sort of led to a number of events, but I think we should probably start there.
So, you know, what happened when you were young and what happened with your dad and how did that lead to future things?
So when I was five, my father was finishing medical school and around that time, Yeah, he converted, and it was an interesting time because it was 1979, and that was right when the moral majority was picking up, or right at the beginning of that.
And also at that time, my parents, we moved back to the Mississippi Delta too, so he just kind of got involved with some very
Extreme fundamentalism hodgepodge of people like Bill Gothard and RJ Rush Dooney and then like Francis Schaeffer who's kind of like more like hippie and that you know hippie like with anti-abortion and then James Dobson I mean I mean so many people I mean my dad loves my dad's you know he he just would get really obsessed with different people and we would drive around like listen to tapes of religious sermons but the problem is
That works if you're a straight, white, American male, but if you're a woman or you're a child, that's a really restrictive environment to grow up if you're living according to these guys' principles.
I couldn't wear dresses.
I mean, I could only wear dresses.
I couldn't wear pants.
I couldn't watch TV.
I couldn't listen to music.
It was just kind of like this end but not of this world existence.
Yeah, so you really had, you know, a lot of folks write to me and they say, you know, you need to make sure to kind of make a distinction between like evangelicalism and fundamentalism.
And I think that's true.
And if folks go back and listen to some of our very first episodes, we do some of that.
But, you know, when I learned about your story, and as I've read just some of your work and how you've described it, you really did have like a very fundamentalist upbringing, right?
Like you said, like strict dress code, no TV, No radio except for sort of like, you know, Christian content.
Your dad, you know, I was a convert.
I converted at 14 and I remember the convert's zeal.
But luckily, I was 14 and it was just me that was sort of like on my big kick.
But your dad's, you know, the zeal that your dad had as a convert really sort of like trickled down to you and the rest of your family, right?
I mean, it really affected every part of your life.
Oh, every part of my existence.
And, um, my mother's existence, you know?
I mean, yeah, everything.
I mean, for a while he was flirting with, um, the quiverful movement.
And, but, I mean, pretty much my mother's OBGYN was like, she can't bear any more children, you know?
Just, like, physically.
Fundamentalism, I mean, it's just really bad if you're being fed a straight white American male.
Well, and one of the things you mentioned there was that you, you know, your dad converted at the time really in the late 70s when, as we've talked about really at length on this show, the Mormon majority and the religious right had really gained steam.
I mean, 1979 is really the time when people like Jerry Falwell are really garnering evangelical support for Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter, the sitting president.
And, you know, should we mention the sitting Southern Baptist evangelical president?
So this is really like a big time moment in history and I think what's fascinating about your story is your story maps on to like really key chapters in the like history of the religious right in this country.
So as you mentioned, you spent most of your childhood in the Mississippi Delta.
Can you tell us about some of those sort of like famous or infamous events or people like connected to where you grew up and how that kind of relates to the religious right?
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