When I Was Red Clay: A Journey of Identity, Healing, and Wonder

by Jonathan T. Bailey

Overview

33rd Annual Reading the West Book Award Winner for Memoir, 2023 Foreword INDIES Award Silver Winner, LGBTQ+, and New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards Finalist for Memoir and LGBTQ

"Readers will find hope and peace on these beautifully written pages."—LIBRARY JOURNAL (starred review)

A young person's story of growing up gay in a rural Mormon town and the wild places where he found refuge.

This intimate record lays bare one person's experience growing up in a rural Mormon community and struggling to reconcile his sexual orientation with the religious doctrine of his childhood. Weaving together prose, poetry, and stories scrawled on the margins of high school notebooks, Jonathan T. Bailey encounters truth-seeing owls, anachronistic gourds, and the hard-edged realities of family and church. In When I Was Red Clay, he navigates desert landscapes, mental health, and the loss of faith with unflinching honesty and biting humor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948814638
Publisher:	Torrey House Press
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Pages:	157
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jonathan T. Bailey is a conservation photographer with a background in cultural resources. Author of the literary memoir When I Was Red Clay: A Journey of Identity, Healing, and Wonder and the photograph and essay collection Rock Art: A Vision of a Vanishing Cultural Landscape, his work has been published in Archaeology Southwest, the Salt Lake Tribune, Indian Country Today, and elsewhere. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Foreword xiii

Testimony 1

Procession of Trees 13

Journal Entry: May 9, 2019 16

They 17

Burnice 20

Blood Moon 25

Journal Entry, Undated 29

Song Dog 30

Fox 32

An Evening with Tyto Alba 34

They Take Our Bodies 37

Memorial 39

Solitude's Double Helix 40

Journal Entry: March 2011 48

The Letters I Never Wrote 49

Pandemic Reflections 51

June 26, 2015 55

January 24, 2021 59

House of Aquilegia 61

Turquoise Messengers 65

Double-Headed Passerine 73

Journal Entry: January 16, 2021 79

Time Travelers 80

Time Travelers of a Different Eukaryote 86

Writing to Reconcile 92

Down The Colorado 98

January 1, 2010 102

Juniper Roots 104

Journal Entry: September 3, 2020 109

Daydreaming 110

Mussentuchit Badlands 115

A Personal Topography of Hue and Color 119

Walking to the Underworld 123

Market Sojourn 128

Uncomfortable 131

Beneath, Beneath 134

Death 136

High Deserts 138

Ruth 143

Buhle 146

Afterword 149

Acknowledgments 152

Works Cited 154

Further Reading and Resources 156

About the Author 159

Editorial Reviews

06/06/2022

Conservation photographer Bailey (Rock Art) contends with his troubled Mormon upbringing and relationship to the natural world in this meditative memoir composed of journal entries, essays, and poems. The author, who was shunned by his community and family for being gay, recalls painful memories of a 1990s childhood in which classmates intimidated him with concealed weapons and physical assaults. At home, Bailey found little refuge living with an anorexic mother and a father who demanded that Bailey renounce his sexuality or be punished eternally. In lyrical odes to the natural beauty of the southwestern deserts, Bailey details his turn to nature for respite with an emphasis on the ancient rock art he encountered in his explorations. He also, however, draws facile connections between his Mormon ancestors’ experience to that of contemporary undocumented Mexican migrants crossing the militarized U.S. border (“Our feet were burned red under these same soils... for the same sense of safety sought by migrants entering this country today”), often leading his reflections on freedom and religious identity to ring hollow. Though some fragments struggle to cohere, Bailey’s moving testament of resilience is sure to satisfy readers of nature writing and autobiography alike. Fans of Terry Tempest Williams and Robin Wall Kimmerer should take note. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"A courageous memoir of growing up gay in a rural Mormon community and avoiding erasure by finding refuge in wilderness."

—TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS, The New York Times

"In Bailey's profoundly moving memoir, the diversity of creation illuminates the inner landscape and inspires healing—and wonder. The past is a gift, Bailey says, and this brave journey into the intimate wilderness is another gift. With the clarity and fresh eyes of meditation, we visit the topography of bones, the meaning of the natural world, and the centering of spirit within ourselves, within community, and in our footsteps and vision. In the true meaning of the word: this book is awesome."

—GEORGE K. ILSLEY, author of The Home Stretch: A Father, a Son, and All the Things They Never Talk About

"Utah's Emery County maps hard ideological boundaries over some of the harshest landscapes of the arid West. Even so, the stratified cliffs, seeping recesses, and crustal sinks testify of lush and various inhabitations, eon upon eon. Utterly here, Bailey confines us to a temporal body untenable and ecstatic, hypersensitized to the play of surface and interior, opacity and revelation, hostility and intimacy. This kind of writing can only emerge from the awful beauty of always-yet-never Home."

—KARIN ANDERSON, author of Before Us Like a Land of Dreams

"When I Was Red Clay is honest as acid and proof that nature can provide."

—ADVENTURE JOURNAL

"Touching on current events and topics, from conservation and immigration to suicide and autism, Bailey has penned a thought-provoking memoir. The wilderness of deserts in Utah and Arizona are their own characters…Readers will find hope and peace on these beautifully written pages."

—LIBRARY JOURNAL (starred review)

"Bailey's moving testament of resilience is sure to satisfy readers of nature writing and autobiography alike. Fans of Terry Tempest Williams and Robin Wall Kimmerer should take note."

—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Bailey's evocative, candid memoir explores spirituality, heritage, and the lives and landscapes we choose to inhabit. Offering hope to disenfranchised LGBTQ+ youth through its testament of self-acceptance and recovery, When I Was Red Clay also stresses the need to find new and 'open-armed communities' when old worlds are no longer sustainable."

—FOREWORD REVIEWS

“When I Was Red Clay is an homage to the western desert country, a place that can be ‘unimaginably bewitching.’ I haven’t read something so beautiful in a long time. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

—MARYA JOHNSTON, Out West Books

From the Publisher

★ 06/01/2022

Bailey, a gay ex-Mormon and advocate for conservation and climate control, weaves a beautiful tapestry of dignity and respect for mankind and nature in his memoir. When Bailey left the LDS Church, he did not find God in the wilderness. He found something much more powerful: the majesty of nature and its ability to provide peace many people never discover. Touching on current events and topics, from conservation and immigration to suicide and autism, Bailey has penned a thought-provoking memoir. Questioning his sexuality, his faith, and whether peace and disorder can coexist, Bailey seeks to find healing and connection and takes readers on his intimate journey. With a narrative told through free verse, prose, journal entries, and love letters, this is one man's attempt to reconcile childhood traumas through the presence of spirit found in nature. The wilderness of deserts in Utah and Arizona are their own characters in this beautiful book. This immersive experience is one part travel guide and guidebook to native plants and one part exploration of kinship between the human spirit and the Earth. VERDICT Readers will find hope and peace on these beautifully written pages.—Alana R. Quarles

Library Journal