The 'remarkable' return of Harrison Mooney

Harrison Mooney thought he was done with Abbotsford and the Fraser Valley.

But the valley wasn’t done with him.

Three years ago in 2020, Mooney was in the midst of writing a book about his upbringing as a adopted Black child in a religious fundamentalist Abbotsford household. He was pouring words onto the page, and many of them cast his family and his former community in a poor light.

In an online conversation with this reporter, Mooney wrote that, after the book came out, he didn’t expect to be banned from his hometown.

Mooney’s comments weren’t entirely serious—he didn’t actually expect the city to pass a law that would make it illegal for him to, say, go to Castle Fun Park—but he genuinely expected a local backlash to what he was writing .Nothing hurts like the truth, and Mooney expected that telling his truth about Abbotsford would send community members rallying to the barricades to defend their home.

Mooney had grown up feeling like an outsider in the valley. He didn’t think his book would improve things at all.

“I thought this would be one of those, ‘Prophet isn't accepted in his hometown’ situations,” Mooney told The Current.

Mooney thought wrong. Nine months after his memoir, Invisible Boy, was published, he said the reaction in his former hometown has been “remarkable” and unexpected.

Invisible Boy had a major Canadian publisher and it has been read by people across the country, and beyond, but few places have embraced it like his former hometown, he said.

“I didn’t think that the best reception would be in the Fraser Valley, but so far it seems like that’s where the book is really resonating with people the most.”

In January, a group created to help Black Abbotsford students find others like them organized a community event built around a speech by Mooney. The event, at Yale Secondary School, was a massive hit. Hundreds attended, and after Mooney’s speech, many lined up to speak to him personally (and buy a book).

“They just said such incredible things,” Mooney recalled. “It was my dream to, you know, offer this book to the world and have people welcome me and embrace this book and embrace the ideas. And so far that’s been what happened. Yeah… I did not anticipate the warm reception I would get to what I imagined was a very controversial book.”

Among those lining up to shake Mooney’s hand were local politicians, including the city’s mayor.

Mooney thinks the response has been so positive partly because of the lack of previous stories written about the Fraser Valley—and especially because of a paucity of accounts from those from backgrounds that don’t fit the region’s white Christian stereotype. There are many people who feel like they don’t fit in—whether because of their skin colour or sexuality—looking for others who share that experience.

“The story of growing up in this community where you kind of have to deny yourself and cloister yourself off or keep parts of you hidden so you can fit in—I think that a lot of people are seeing that their own personal narrative, regardless of whether they’re Black or white or what have you, really mirrors my own,” Mooney said.

“Most people from my hometown who read it have been just really excited to read something that speaks to this local experience of growing up in this very religious community where there isn’t a lot of language afforded to people who are other—who are neurodivergent or are queer or all the different ways we can feel marginalized.”

There’s an irony. Mooney’s book is about how he felt alone and isolated growing up. But the reaction to the book from those with similar experiences has helped reveal that part of the struggle was in connecting with others who are also struggling just out of sight. Now, through activism, artistic works like Mooney’s, and community organizations like Black Connections, once-isolated people are finding their own communities—and transforming the Fraser Valley.

“I don’t remember there being this much openness in the valley,” Mooney said. Writing about his life, and how he felt about his home, “always felt like something I was going to have to strike out on my own to do… and defend my right to do this.

“Instead, I’ve found a community of people who needed this, and that gives me a lot of hope for the region. It gives me a lot of hope for people that we’re collectively working through maybe a strange time in our lives, a strange time for this community. It seems like a lot of people are coming out of the fog and in one way or another they’re looking for guidance and touchstones and license to feel the way that they do. And it seems like my book has given them that.”

Tomorrow: Mooney on the struggle to make a living from writing, and why he still wants to write another memoir.