Amber Scorah

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Author, Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life

Amber Scorah is a writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She is author of the memoir “Leaving the Witness,” published by Viking Books.



After growing up in the Jehovah's Witness faith, Scorah learned Mandarin Chinese and moved to Mainland China to become an underground missionary. In China, encountering a new culture and making friends outside the faith for the first time, Scorah came to question the beliefs she had been taught from childhood and ended up leaving the religion. Shunned by family and friends as an apostate, Scorah was alone in Shanghai and thrown into a world she had only known from the periphery, with no education or support system.

 

Scorah later moved to New York City, where she began a new life. Several years later, her three-month old son died on his first day in childcare. After this tragedy, Scorah became a parental leave advocate. Combining forces with a Republican mother, their bipartisan efforts brought the cause of parental leave to the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in Brooklyn culture by Brooklyn Magazine. 

 

Before coming to New York City, Scorah was creator and host of the podcast “Dear Amber—The Insider's Guide to Everything China,” one of iTunes' Top 10 Podcasts of 2008. She is a TEDx speaker and has appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, NPR Morning Edition, CBC’s The Current, CTV’s Your Morning and more. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Believer, The Boston Globe, The Cut, The Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.