Real People's Strange Lives

Hello!

I hope you've all recovered from the fun frenzy of Christmas and Boxing Day.  What is a holiday season without eating too much and then battling 50,000 cars at a shopping mall?

A growing and popular genre of recent years is the childhood memoir, often referred to as a "misery memoir" that tells of a strange and dreadful childhood and subsequent recovery.   The kickoff misery memoir for me is definitely Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle,  a riveting tale of neglect and weirdness with four children being raised by mentally ill addicts who are not abusive so much as neglectful and incompetent. It's got a strong beginning when Walls sees her mother rummaging through a dumpster.

Recently I've read two books in which the subjects are lied to by their parents until they can unravel the family mysteries as adults. Five Days Gone: the Mystery of my Mother's Disappearance as a Child, in which the author Laura Cummings' mother is kidnapped for five days when she is a toddler, tells of a family that is built on fabrication. The whole community is aware that this child's parents are not who they say they are, and keep the secrets from her until Cummings begins to look into the situation.

Another family built on lies is portrayed in Sarah Valentine's When I was White.  All during her childhood, Sarah was questioned about her race.  Growing up in a white family, she stood out as looking very different but her mother explained that she looked more Italian than the rest of the family.  After pressuring her mother she learns that she is actually African-American.  How did this happen? 

There are many good books about strange families.  I also enjoyed Red Star Tattoo by Sonja Larsen, in which her parents dump her into a communist cult at the age of eight and then leave, North of Normal by Cea Sunrise Person, and Leaving the Witness: exiting a religion and finding a life by Amber Scorah.   Scorah's book is one of a subgenre of memoirs about children brought up in cults and oppressive religions.  Very enjoyable tales indeed.

Here is a strange photo taken in the Seattle Public Library, a fitting complement to the family weirdness of the misery memoirs.