A world to hold us all
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A World to Hold Us All is a mythological biography about growing up queer in an evangelical household and being raised alongside the internet in the early 2000s. The manuscript revolves around the invisible friends my best friend, Stephanie, and I constructed at fifteen to explore our blossoming sexuality and queerness safely in the realm of imagination, so as to not upset our parents and the religious doctrines we were raised with. I weave stories about my physical reality as a teenager--growing up in a Pentecostal family, attending church three times a week--with the imaginative reality Stephanie and I made for ourselves: the Invisible boys who lived in my home and went to my school, but who also had the freedom and experience to go to bars, date women, and drink alcohol. I ask the reader to question what it means to be real and human and how we draw those boundaries, often at the exclusion of others. The story especially follows the development of my romantic relationship with Danny, one of the invisible boys that was "voiced" by Stephanie online. My mother, who had originally accepted the Invisibles with mild bemusement and good-natured confusion, eventually caught wind of my relationship with Danny and panicked at the queer implications in such a relationship. She ordered me to stop, which set off a chain reaction that negatively affected both families: Stephanie's family left the church completely; she and I fell out of touch for more than two years; and I became obsessed with finding new ways to define faith that did not result in pain.
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Ph. D.