Official Press Release on Beige.com
Love Me As I Am brings together a group of twenty four diverse gay men from all over the world who share their experiences of overcoming difficult childhoods, making peace with the past and embracing the future with renewed enthusiasm
It’s a fast-changing world for the gay community and in the past decade progress towards social acceptance has been made in leaps and bounds. Still, the fact remains that homophobic bullying is a harsh reality for many young gay people and it often has fatal consequences. It’s no secret that suicides among gay teenagers are escalating. This topic is not even worthy of any debate. The answer is simple: It has to stop.
The message that it’s OK to be different is one of the most important messages to get across among young gay adults and their peers. The idea behind Love Me As I Am was not to create romantic and beautiful stories. Instead, it was about giving each contributor the opportunity to lay down his own personal truth.
Within the gay community — especially among gay teenagers — there is a need to relate to the struggles other gay men faced and even more so, to learn how those obstacles were overcome. This is the goal that lies at the heart of the book.
Written with passion, insight, sensitivity, wisdom and a bucket-load of optimism, the contributors all show tremendous courage by journeying back into time as they write letters to their younger selves, and share the moments that most impacted their young gay lives.
These stories could very well be among the most provocative, sad, enlightening and inspiring tales you will ever read. In sharing their life experiences, these men not only give themselves the opportunity to heal their own wounds, but they also give the reader a bird’s eye view of the key moments that shape the lives of so many gay men.
Above all, within its pages Love Me As I Am speaks of the one universal truth everyone can relate to: The voice inside all of us that simply says ‘Love Me As I Am’. This is why the book has the potential to impact the lives of every reader — irrespective of their sexual orientation…
The book has been curated by Ade Adeniji, Darren Brady and editor Francois Lubbe. All profits gained by The Quest through sales of the book will be donated to Diversity Role Models — a charity that actively seeks to prevent homophobic bullying in schools, in the United Kingdom. Their aim is to stop bullying before it happens by educating all young people about differences in sexuality and gender identity.
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Love Me As I Am 