Book Description
Imagine a young boy who has never had a loving home. His only possesions are the old, torn clothes he carries in a paper bag. The only world he knows is one of isolation and fear. Although others had rescued this boy from his abusive alcoholic mother, his real hurt is just begining -- he has no place to call home. This is Dave Pelzer's long-awaited sequel to A Child Called "It". In The Lost Boy, he answers questions and reveals new adventures through the compelling story of his life as an adolescent. Now considered an F-Child (Foster Child), Dave is moved in and out of five different homes. He suffers shame and experiences resentment from those who feel that all foster kids are trouble and unworthy of being loved just because they are not part of a "real" family. Tears, laughter, devastation and hope create the journey of this little lost boy who searches desperately for just one thing -- the love of a family.
Customer Reviews:
so sad.......2007-10-09
I've read all of the books and this one I felt was not as exciting as the rest but if you plan on reading all of them then you must read this one. So if you do plan on it just read it, it's not that bad but it's not that good.
The brave boy.......2007-05-25
I recommend this book because it is very interesting,and you do not want to put it down.In the book, I learned that I have a good life and that I should be thankful for everything I have after seeing what Dave has gone through in his life. I would read another book by this author because all of the books are sequels and at the end of each book you are left hanging and wondering what will happen next. These are some things about the The Lost Boy.
Dave's story helped me during really tough times........2007-04-18
As a foster parent who accepted only one child at a time, I needed all the inspiration I could get. Dave's story not only inspired but also encouraged me. It is full of truths that make us aware of how blessed we are. Anyone who is interested in helping abused kids should read this book. With Great Mercy author.
The story continues.......2007-04-14
Dave Pelzer gives a wonderfull account of his experiences of foster care in this sequel to A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive. In this book you begin to see the transition to a "normal" state of being, but it is not without it's problems.
My Hat Goes Off To Dave Pelzer.......2007-04-06
All of Dave Pelzer's books are absolutely by far the best books I have ever read. I couldn't put them down!!!
Amazon.com
The author of Iron and Silk looks back to his tortured youth with self-deprecating humor and wistful fondness. The oldest child in a middle-class household in Connecticut, the son of a piano teacher and a social worker, by age six the author was an eccentric with enormous aspirations - none of them ever fulfilled - who stood out not only from his more conventional parents and brother and sister but from everyone else in his suburban neighborhood. A hilarious memoir in the tradition of Russell Baker's Growing Up.
Book Description
From the author of Iron & Silk comes a charming and frequently uproarious account of an American adolescence in the age of Bruce Lee, Ozzy Osborne, and Kung Fu. As Salzman recalls coming of age with one foot in Connecticut and the other in China (he wanted to become a wandering Zen monk), he tells the story of a teenager trying to attain enlightenment before he's learned to drive.
Customer Reviews:
entertaining read.......2007-09-14
My mother sent me this book for my birthday and I enjoyed every page. Very entertaining, both funny and serious, as well as making some great observations about growing up in Ridgefield, CT. I also grew up in Ridgefield in the 70s and the book is a very accurate description of life in Ridgefield back then. I amazed at how much he was able to remember, I'm not able to remember anywhere near that many details about my own childhood.
My favorite martial arts related autobiography!!!.......2005-09-06
I have read almost every martial arts autobiography that has been published in the English language. I have put together quite a collection of them from all over the world. As proof, check out my book Martial Arts Biographies-An Annotated Bibliography (ISBN:0595348610). So I think I know a little about the subject of martial arts autobiographies. I liked Salzman's first book Iron & Silk. It is a classic to be sure. But I absolutly loved Lost In Place. It is the funniest of any martial arts biography that I have read. It is also very serious in other parts of the book. The story is great, and I recommend it very highly! Beyond being my favorite martial arts autobiography,I would put it in my top five favorite books of all. BUY IT, READ IT, AND LAUGH YOUR BUTT OFF!!!!
Laughed out loud.......2005-01-03
Memoir of Mark Salzman's adolescent years in Connecticut. Outrageously funny in spots, touching in others, and interesting throughout. The author's description of Sensei O'Keefe and the stories surrounding the Kung Fu Dojo are riotous. Ed, his eternally pessimistic father, adds another element of humor to the story. The novel describes an eccentric teenager's failed attempts to "change myself into something I'm not. The story of my life." He obsessively pursues first Kung Fu to become a fearless warior, then years of cello training to achieve a dream of becoming a concert celloist, and majors in Chinese at Yale because "it was the one subject I had a head start in and could therefore look smarter than I really was." The book is a good reflection back on the eccentricities of adolescence with a profound message offered in the end.
This book is an absolute gem........2004-08-08
This book is an absolute gem. How often do you come across a martial arts book that is not just well written but genuinely, heartbreakingly funny? Mr. Salzman has already shown us he can write in his first book, Iron and Silk, the story of his two years spent in China teaching English and practicing wushu with Pan Qing Fu. The book was later made into a critically acclaimed film of the same name. In Lost in Place, the author lets us in on the secrets of his adolescence. Anyone who has ever been seized by the desire to shave his head, dye his pyjamas purple, and abandon the fast food of suburbia for the wandering life of a Zen monk will love this book.
We follow Salzman through the perils of teenage life, goofing off at school and then frantically trying to make up, agonizing about dates, buying his first car, choosing what to study at university, and in general giving his long suffering family a hard time, and all of this while struggling between Eastern and Western worldviews. We meet some strange people he encountered in his attempts to become a Bruce Lee clone, such as the ominous Sensei O'Keefe, the rowdy and foul-mouthed master of the Chinese Boxing Institute, with his dreaded brainwave, "cemetery sparring". Apart from the stories of Salzman's various martial art experiences, some hilarious and some appalling, there are some well drawn scenes of his interaction with his father, who is described as a good natured pessimist, probably not a bad thing to be for someone forced to compete with the glamorous Bruce Lee for his son's affections. There is a lovely scene of his father listening to an outpouring of his son's existential angst. We get a picture of a gentle, mature man with a nice sense of irony. He must be proud now of how his son has turned out. Salzman has written four critically acclaimed novels, one of which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Review Award. He is a great storyteller and this book will not let you down.
Boy, can I relate.......2004-05-13
In addition to a memoir, this book is an effective mediation on what it really means to master something. We see Salzman try to become a martial artist, and, later, a cello soloist, the first with considerable dedication, the latter with a certain amount of natural ability; in both cases, though, he eventually realizes that he just doesn't have what it takes to really master the discipline. In the case of Kung Fu, after three years of study, he encounters a drugged-out man who threatens him with a lead pipe. In spite of the fact that he could probably easily disarm him, Salzman's nerve fails him and he hands over his wallet. Later, with the cello, he gives up after seeing one performance by legendary cellist Yo Yo Ma. He ends up finding his greatest success as a mailboy for an attorney.
One thing that struck me as interesting is that (I read somewhere) 'Kung Fu' refers to any human skill in Chinese (making a 'Kung Fu skills' redundant, like ATM machine); it's sort of a metaphor, then, for everything Salzman pursues.
Another thing to note is that in spite of the subtitle 'growing up absurd in suburbia,' Salzman's martial arts training is astonishingly difficult. His teacher is a borderline psychopath who curses and hits his students (at one point he throws Mark against a trophy display case), and the school regularly practices full-range sparring with no protective equipment except for a cup, which is about as hardcore, comparatively, as playing the cello with the skin stripped off your fingers.
Book Description
A young girl is perched on the cold chrome of yet another doctor’s examining table, missing yet another day of school. Just twelve, she’s tall, skinny, and weak. It’s four o’clock, and she hasn’t been allowed to eat anything all day. Her mother, on the other hand, seems curiously excited. She's about to suggest open-heart surgery on her child to "get to the bottom of this." She checks her teeth for lipstick and, as the doctor enters, shoots the girl a warning glance. This child will not ruin her plans.
Sickened
From early childhood, Julie Gregory was continually X-rayed, medicated, and operated on—in the vain pursuit of an illness that was created in her mother’s mind. Munchausen by proxy (MBP) is the world’s most hidden and dangerous form of child abuse, in which the caretaker—almost always the mother—invents or induces symptoms in her child because she craves the attention of medical professionals. Many MBP children die, but Julie Gregory not only survived, she escaped the powerful orbit of her mother's madness and rebuilt her identity as a vibrant, healthy young woman.
Sickened is a remarkable memoir that speaks in an original and distinctive Midwestern voice, rising to indelible scenes in prose of scathing beauty and fierce humor. Punctuated with Julie's actual medical records, it re-creates the bizarre cocoon of her family's isolated double-wide trailer, their wild shopping sprees and gun-waving confrontations, the astonishing naïveté of medical professionals and social workers. It also exposes the twisted bonds of terror and love that roped Julie's family together—including the love that made a child willing to sacrifice herself to win her mother's happiness.
The realization that the sickness lay in her mother, not in herself, would not come to Julie until adulthood. But when it did, it would strike like lightning. Through her painful metamorphosis, she discovered the courage to save her own life—and, ultimately, the life of the girl her mother had found to replace her.
Sickened takes us to new places in the human heart and spirit. It is an unforgettable story, unforgettably told.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
Great book.......2007-09-20
This is an excellent book about what survivors of Munchausen's by Proxy live with. I especially liked the author's description of how she thought her early experiences were "normal" and how she still felt close to her parents for a while as an adult in spite of the abuse she endured.
This book will make you inspect yourself..........2007-06-11
I guess I had a pretty normal childhood. After reading Julie's book, I certainly feel that way. I also realize how little I look at others as people. I mean, sure I see everyone as people, but thinking more deeply as to why people do things... well, I don't do that often. So, when I meet someone who is eccentric and hard to understand, maybe I'm quick to judge and brush off as merely "too different" for me. This book made me realize that there's so much more to people than what I see. This disorder could have affected anyone I may meet... how do you know? I feel I may be able to see other's lives from a new perspective, one that is more loving and caring than anything I've ever been taught, or anything I've ever tried. I think many people will feel the same.
Sad Beyond Belief .......2007-05-23
Julie Gregory must be an amazing sole to have lived this life and survived. I have heard a little about MBP but after reading this book, I want to learn more. I need to learn more. Julie's horrific childhood consisted of abuse and torture...of the body and mind. Her childhood was stripped away from her at the hands of those who should have protected her. Be prepared emotionally to read a very descriptive book that will make you hug your child and thank your mother.
Unsettling story of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.......2007-02-13
"Sickened" is an autobiography about the victim of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MBP). MBP is a mental disorder in which a person (usually a mother) inflicts injury on another (usually a child) in order to gain attention and praise. In this case, the author's mother was the predator. It's hard to believe that anyone's childhood could be this awful. Ms. Gregory's childhood was not full of love, but of horrible abuse - such as being starved, given medicine to make her sick, subjected to rigorous and invasive medical tests and procedures for no reason, and being forced to work on the family farm for hours every day while trying to recover from surgery. Not only was her mother abusive, but her father was as well, beating her and (somehow worse) forcing her to eat his used Kleenex. It's shocking to read about how greedy and selfish they are, about the mother taking in foster children and elderly people for the money and then abusing them.
The author does a wonderful job of explaining the disorder, gives a lot of insight into her childhood and information about her family. The book isn't long and is relative fast-paced. It's equally interesting and horrifying. She definitely has a gift for writing. The book flows well, but does slow down a bit when we get to the part about her going to college, and living in her house of mirrors. Somehow, it doesn't seem that she got into much detail about when she found out about MBP her exploration of condition. She doesn't talk much about her therapy, either.
I'm disappointed that there's not much of a follow-up on the book. What happened to the mother? Has she been prosecuted? Is she still taking in foster children? The author has a website, but the link to the "update" page is broken.
This is a very personal and educational book. I highly recommend it to those who are interested in reading about mental conditions.
Strong and horrifying at first, but the end is a little meh........2007-01-13
Abnormal psychology is another passion of mine. Pretty much the weirder it is, the more I want to know about it. Whilst my favourite disorders are ones like alexithymia and dissociative identity disorder that's severe enough to have dissociative fugues, ones that are transferred onto others strike me as just the weirdest things ever. For those who haven't heard of the disorder, Munchausen syndrome is a disorder in which patients feign illness in order to get attention from people. They're willing to go to all lengths in order to get this attention no matter how painful the procedure may be. In order to avoid being diagnosed with the disorder, the patients will bounce around from doctor to doctor, claiming that when a doctor doesn't find anything wrong with them, it's because the doctor is just a poorly educated doctor who will likely be sued in the near future because he or she didn't find whatever was wrong with the patient.
This may seem like a horrible position to place one's self in, but it does get worse. Beyond this first-person disease is something that crosses into the realms of child abuse, a condition known as 'Munchausen syndrome by proxy.' The Merck Manual, basically my medical bible, gives the best definition of this:
The adult falsifies history and may injure the child with drugs or other agents or add blood or bacterial contaminants to urine specimens to simulate disease. The parent seeks medical care for the child and appears to be deeply concerned and protective. The child typically has a history of frequent hospitalizations, usually for a variety of nonspecific symptoms, but no firm diagnosis. Victimized children may be seriously ill and sometimes die.
Although this usually happens to young children and, because medical professionals are now more familiar because of high-profile MBP cases, the children are taken away from their parents, it is rare to see a person who remains in a MBP situation until adulthood. Julie Gregory, however, remained with her abusive parents until she was eighteen and found herself wandering back to them even to her thirties. Born prematurely to an anorexic mother, she was very ill in infancy. Appreciative of the attention people doled out to her because of her sickly baby, she decided to mentally profit from it. As a child, Julie was carted around from doctor to doctor as her mother demanded they 'find out what was wrong with [her].' She had all sorts of tests done on her, had an entire cabinet in the kitchen devoted to just her medications, and never really got a chance at school because her mother was carting her around Ohio looking for the next doctor to check her out.
In order to make her appear sick, her mother rarely allowed her to eat. When she went in for cardiologist appointments, her body struggled when she even tried to stand. She was always tired, and when writing this memoir, she remembered that at no point did anyone ask if she'd been eating. When she was finally admitted to a hospital for observation and began eating, there was a marked improvement in her health, but afraid that they would send her home, she began making herself sick in the hopes that she would be able to remain there. Once liberated from her parents after her mother tried to do an arranged marriage between her and a man twice her age, Julie sunk into her own little pit of despair especially after hearing about MBP in a psychology class but then also finding that no therapist she talked to had even heard of the disorder.
From the time she is emancipated until the book ends, she tries to make amends with her parents but finds that despite all outward appearances, neither of them has changed at all since her childhood. Her mother has continued MBP with a new adopted daughter and Julie makes it her goal in life to free the girl from her mother's grasp by taking her mother to court for child abuse.
This book is definitely something that those interested in psychology would enjoy. It's very much like a personalisation of a case file, showing how the disorder manifests itself from the youth of the mother up through the adulthood of the daughter. For those entering the mental health industry and even those going into the medical field, this book offers a wealth of information about the disorder in a very accessible format.
Average customer rating:
- Vivid, uncomfortable
- Intensely Emotional ...
- Poor Baby!
- Bad book club selection. No insiration
- All of Jennifer Lauck's Books are Funny and Heart Wrenching
|
Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found
Jennifer Lauck
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ASIN: 0671042564 |
Amazon.com
Jennifer Lauck conveys the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions of a frightened child with utter conviction and vivid immediacy in her remarkable memoir of the six years during which both of her parents died. Lauck opens in 1969, when she is 5 and her 31-year-old mother is entering the final phase of a decade of severe health problems. Momma is beautiful and loving; we feel the tender intimacy between mother and daughter, even as we see that Jennifer has assumed a lot of adult responsibilities that make her fearful and obsessed with rules. Eight-year-old brother Bryan responds to Momma's illnesses with anger, and is often cruel to his sister. High-powered, workaholic Daddy does his best, but is not around a lot. (The adult author subtly depicts the kids' half-conscious understanding that Daddy is seeing other women.) As Momma's health worsens and the family moves to Southern California to be near a better hospital, Lauck captures in painful detail the atmosphere of physical decay that surrounds a mortally ill woman. Momma dies on Bryan's 10th birthday. In short order, Daddy has moved them all in with Deb, who obviously has been his girlfriend for a while, and events spiral down from there. Daddy dies of a heart attack before Jennifer turns 10; Deb keeps the stepchildren (whom she dislikes) so that she can get their social security allotment; Jennifer is sent out to work at a residence that is run by Deb's creepy Freedom Community Church. She is 11 by the time that her aunt and uncle rescue her--a moment that is nearly as exultant for readers as it is for the girl whose trials they have shared for nearly 400 pages. Her harrowing story might sound unrelievedly grim in the retelling, but Lauck's lack of self-pity and the delicacy of her prose transform it into an odyssey of endurance and transcendence. --Wendy Smith
Book Description
To young Jenny, the house on Mary Street was home -- the place where she was loved, a blue-sky world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even her mother's pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with powder and a kiss on the cheek. But when everything that Jenny had come to rely on begins to crumble, an odyssey of loss, loneliness, and a child's will to survive takes flight....
Customer Reviews:
Vivid, uncomfortable.......2007-08-11
I have to admit that when I first started this book, I had to put it down. I knew it would be sad, and I wasn't in the right mindset the first time around.
But when I picked it up a few months later, I easily became completely engrossed in Jennifer's story. I was afraid of reading about her losing her mother (which is the premise, I'm not giving anything away if you haven't read this yet) but what I found as the story unfolded is that being in the room with her sick mother might actually have been the only safe place for her.
My husband asked, "why do you read books like this? Where's the redemption?" I first I chalked his question up to the stereotypical differing interests between men and women...but in thinking about it I'm drawn to authors who write with a raw voice, who depict their experience completely, without fear of the uncomfortable or outright awful things they have been through. Lauck uses her childhood voice and remains true to it throughout. She digs deeper and deeper into the person she was, and dares to share her with us all. Congratulations to her, I can't imagine what the experience of writing this book has been for her.
Intensely Emotional ..........2007-06-29
I found this book at the Dollar Tree and just picked it up to read (I thought it would be similar to "A Girl Named Zippy" by Haven Kimmel ~~ it's so different!). I read it in two days ~~ just finished it five minutes ago and while I need to take the kids to a doctor's appointment, I need a few minutes to compose myself. Why? It is one of the most intense and emotional memoirs I have ever read. Is this my favorite book? No. But it is one of the best written books I have read this year and one of the more enlightening ones. It shows the worst of human beings and the best of humans.
Jennifer Lauck, named Sunshine by her mother, grew up in a loving home even though her mother was chronically ill through most of her childhood. Her mother dies when she was six. Her father remarries to a horrid woman who has three children of her own. Then her father died when she was 10. This is when it got to be really emotional for me. Jenny was kicked out of her stepmom's home and sent to live in an communal living area with strangers. Barely 11, she had to fend for herself. Fortunately, it was better than living with her stepmom. However, when her stepmom decided that her church was "evil" ~~ Jenny had to move back in with her. But not for long as her mom's family found her and her brother.
This book will tug and pull at your heartstrings. It will make you question the whole of the human race. It will make you ponder the future and start thinking about who will take care of your children if something should ever happen to you. This book is written from a child's perspective ~~ very harrowing like one reviewer has mentioned and very confused ~~ you feel Jenny's confusion and fear as she just tries to survive. It makes you wonder why her family never came to claim her after her dad died ~~ probably figured that she was better off with her stepmom. (I don't know as I haven't read the sequel yet!) Anyways, Jenny's story will touch your heart and soul in places you would never think to look at. And it will make you count your blessings and your children's blessings in ways you don't normally think about. It will also make you more protective of your children ...
Would I recommend this book? Yes. I would also recommend it to the book club as it is definitely a good discussion fodder for any book club. Would I consider this book to be a good reading? No. It is beautifully written but it is so sad. One cannot enjoy reading a book about misery ~~ one can only learn from this book and apply the lessons learned to her/his life. It is a book that should be read as a testimony to Jennifer's strength and strong will and her survival as only then can she trimpuh over the sadness in her life. It is a book about survival, enduring love and fighting to live. It is a book about the worst of life and the best of life and how life just happens ...
If you read this book ~~ you will not walk away from it unchanged. It will haunt you and remind you of life's fragility.
6-29-07
Poor Baby!.......2007-06-01
This is a memoir of someones life that you would want to wrap your arms around and say "There There it is going to be ok"
After closing the book you then realize this little girl was not completely aware of everything she was experiencing "Until" she became an adult and looked back. The resilency and resourcefulness of oppressed spirits is truly a mercy from the Creator.
Bad book club selection. No insiration .......2007-05-18
Kept hoping this book would evolve into some sort of "parable," where reader could learn something to apply to own life.
All of Jennifer Lauck's Books are Funny and Heart Wrenching.......2007-02-03
I love, love, love memoirs. I love stories that have to do with childhood, death and dying, etc. I love books that are funny, well written and take you away. Thus, Jennifer Lauck's 3 books are all on my best ever, favorite books list.
Download Description
"
You are six years old. Every day after school your father takes you to a sprawling castle filled with exotic animals, bowls of candy, and half-naked women catering to your every need.
You have your own room. You have new friends. You have an uncle Hef who's always there for you.
Welcome to the world of
Playground, the true story of a young girl who grew up inside the Playboy Mansion. By the time she was fourteen, she'd done countless drugs, had a secret affair with Hef's girlfriend, and was already losing her grip on reality. Schoolwork, family, and ""ordinary people"" had no meaning behind the iron gates of the Mansion, where celebrities frolicked, pool parties abounded, and her own father -- Hugh Hefner's personal physician and best friend, the man nicknamed ""Dr. Feel Good"" -- typically held court.
Every day was a party, every night was an adventure, and through it all was a young girl falling faster and faster down the rabbit hole -- trying desperately hard not to get lost.
"
Customer Reviews:
Very Disturbing Story.......2007-08-20
This is a very disturbing story. It could have dug in deeper into the story line. But, It did give you a idea of what she was dealing with. It really sad that she got into drugs and having sex at such a young age. It is sad & disturbing that she didn't really have parental support. That she was able to do the things that she did. When I got done, I didn't really learn anything new. Just that this little girl was able to have this terrible life.
beach book.......2007-08-10
this book is good for the beach. the author tells you about the hard life of drugs, sex and playboy bunnies. This book gave me an insight on what it is like in the playboy manison. now when i look at the parties in the manison that they throw I know what the scene is like. The author tries really hard to write about her self discovery but she really didnt have much of a discovery. Most of the book is about confused life with playboy kendra and her relationship with her father. Basically the same kind of thing you see on the news about lindsay nowadays.
Enticing.......2007-06-09
This book gives, yes one side of the story to the Playboy Mansion but it gives a really good view. This book had me riveted from the first chapter!!! Definetly a good read and will recommend it to everyone I know!!!!
This book is a perfect example...........2007-05-31
...of the phrase, "the banality of evil": poorly written, about stupid people, and with no insight.
Worst of all, the author fails to consider the real source of her problems: herself.
I, also, would give it a zero of I could.
If I could give it 10 Stars I would!.......2007-05-25
This was one of the most insightful books I have ever read. What an interesting life Jennifer Saginor lead and what insight she gave to the Playboy Years at the Mansion. With children of my own, it was very disturbing to read what she was exposed to at such a young age- Wow! But, having said that, what she described- the sex, drugs, celebrity etc was amazing. I thought it very poignant when she described playing hide-no-go-seek with Dorothy Stratton just a week before her murder. I thought that Jennifer did a great, great job on this book while maintaining the mystery and respect of Hugh and his empire.
Book Description
“It is my hope that this memoir may serve as a reminder and a memorial to all of the children who were lost in the Chaos,” Emily Wu writes at the beginning of Feather in the Storm.
Told from a child’s and young girl’s point of view, Wu’s spellbinding account–which spans nineteen years of growing up during the chaos of China’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution–opens on her third birthday as she meets her father for the first time in a concentration camp. A well-known academic and translator of American literary classics, her father had been designated an “ultra-rightist” and class enemy. As a result, Wu’s family would be torn apart and subjected to an unending course of humiliation, hardship and physical and psychological abuse. Wu tells her story of this hidden Holocaust, in which millions of children and their families died, through a series of vivid vignettes that brilliantly–and innocently–evoke the cruelty and brutality of what was taking place daily in the world around her. From watching helplessly as the family apartment is ransacked and her father carted off by former students to be publicly beaten, to her own rape and the hard labor and primitive rituals of life in a remote peasant village, Wu is persecuted as a child of the damned.
Wu’s narrative is poignant, disturbing and unsentimental, and, despite the nature of what it describes, is filled with the resiliency of youth–and even humor. That Emily Wu survived is remarkable. That she is able to infuse her story with such immediacy, power and unexpected beauty is the greatness of this book. Feather in the Storm is an unforgettable story of the courage and silent suffering of one small child set in a quicksand world of endless terror.
Customer Reviews:
Reminder for more compassion .......2007-06-13
Emily Wu and Larry Engelmann book "Feather in the Storm", an amazing openess of Emily Wu's life and history of China during the Cultural Revolution. The events that unfold carries the reader from youth to adulthood during a time of hardship and struggle which reminds us why hope and love is so neccessary and reasons to allow history to not repeat itself...
Prior knowledge of China's history is not required........2007-01-09
My wife and I met Emily Wu at SIUE while on her book tour. Her story was amazing, so we had to buy the book to get the details.
It normally takes me about a year to read a book, but this one I devoured in a matter of days. The perspective of the book grows as she grows. In the beginning it is written as though you are only a couple feet tall - the details are in the words she hears, people's feet and the underside of cribs and tables. Later on she gets taller and you start to experience more of the people around her. But, like the limitations put on a pre-teen, she can only see so much and know so much, therefore her story is limited to just what she could see and understand. You feel as though you are a child right alongside her.
Often I found myself trying to figure out what things meant (names of Mao's movements and doctrine), but that just muddled the story. At times you feel like more should be written about the backstory of the Red Guard, but if you think about the fact that she didn't know much about them at the time it leaves it all in that child-like perspective. She writes about what she saw and read and experienced as a child, especially her reactions to how it changed the people around her.
The tempo is well-paced and manages to catch you off-guard. It covers issues like capping and de-capping, the invasion of the Red Guard at the Anhui University campus in Hefei, book burning, cleansing of the "Old" ways, living conditions, food, suicide, female infanticide, arranged marriage, bound feet, class struggles, child-on-child violence and much more.
When you are finished, you will view your life through a new pair of glasses. You won't be able to go 5 feet without finding 100 things to be truly thankful for.
Hidden horrors inside communist China as experienced by a young girl........2006-12-03
"Feather in the Storm" is a fantastic book. It is well written, and enthralling. I rarely get attached to a story, but I read it through cover to cover with only one break. I couldn't put it down. I am looking forward to the sequel! It is depressing but enlightening. People are really terrible to one another. There is a whole generation lost to the policies of Chairman Mao in the chaos. This comes to light in this true life story of Emily Wu's struggle to survive.
A book that cannot be put down.......2006-11-25
A story of a young child exposed to well 'Chaos' at such a young age yet survived to tell us her experiences. This book, so well written places you there. You can imagine everything she went through in your heart and mind. This book gives you a small taste of life under complete government control. And leaves you with how blessed your childhood was in America.
I highly recommend this book
The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution Told from a Child's Point of View.......2006-11-15
Emily Wu's vivid memories create a heartbreaking story of growing up in China under Mao. Although many years have passed, Emily writes with fresh emotion about her childhood experiences: we are immediately drawn in. This book is an opportunity to see through a child's eyes during this bewildering and chaotic time in China. If we think children do not see and hear everything, we are mistaken. Children are often "under the radar." Emily is frequently unseen--hidden in a tree or in a barn--observing and recording the events she is witnessing.
Emily's family was persecuted because her father was an intellectual, a professor of English, and worse yet, he had studied in America. So the family's treatment was particularly harsh. One feels the impact of the enormity of the harsh treatment because it is being suffered by a child who has done nothing to deserve it.
The book gives insight into politics, education, childhood, and mass psychology. The question,"How could a phenomenon like the Cultural Revolution happen?" crosses your mind as you are reading. China's growing position and power in the world today, makes it important for us to know its past.
Emily's book is testament to survival under terrible, often tragic conditions. One wonders how a child can survive these experiences and still have a smile on her face. A must read.
Customer Reviews:
Culture Clash - Pride and Prejudice unpacked.......2007-07-22
Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections
Pushing Up the Sky
I was buying some books on Amazon.com with an article I had to write at the back of my mind, and a parent Guide I was editing for EMK Press (www.emkpress.com) by Terra Trevor (author of Pushing Up the Sky) at the forefront. I was ordering on automatic pilot, while thinking about the articles I was editing... suddenly my choice of books had an Amazon.com suggestion staring up at me.
It was of course Karin Finell's searing, sensitive book Good-bye to the Mermaids. It documents `a childhood lost in Hitler's Berlin'. My brain clicked into gear as I read the brief blurb. Serendipity! I was writing an article for adoptive parents of kids adopted internationally. The remit? How we adoptive parents help our adopted kids feel pride in birth cultures prejudiced by e.g. civil war, lack of human rights, family planning practices that seem draconian, societies where the ethos of `family' is lost to poverty and the baggage of substance abuse which that brings.
I bought Good-bye to the Mermaids, and devoured it in three late night sittings. And I realised as I read that this book is a must read for anyone who has survived... or helped another survive.. the onslaught of horror and terror which was imposed not sought, where the survivor has been helped to find another safe haven, an anchorage in which to grow.
But the book shows that no-one who survives can leave behind the memories. Even if they move to another country where things are meant to be better...
What a message for adopted children and their parents! EMK Press (where I am Senior Editor) publishes books and offers free Parent Guides for adoptive kids and their families. Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections, our publication for adoptive parents, has a wonderful section JOURNEY which deals with where adoptees travel as adults in making sense of adoption. To add to this chapter in our groundbreaking book, I would recommend that adoptive parents and folk now adult who were adopted internationally read Karin Finell's book on how to survive knowing you were part but NOT part of a culture that made family life impossible.
Realities of a childhood at the end of Nazi Germany and after.......2007-07-21
After reading this remarkable book I concluded it was not only informative as to historical content but also a masterpiece of writing. It is an important addition to a series of books by a variety of people, who lived through the horrors at the end of WWII in Berlin - I have read most of them, including the one by Anonymous. Their stories reflect all of the terror and awful conditions of those months and years as does Karin Finell's book. The framework Finell uses, the very detailed personal memories enriched by her reconstruction of actual verbal exchanges is unique, as is the perspective of a child growing up and experiencing the change from a privileged early childhood to the frightening reality of what followed - and then the slow and gradual recovery. And also, the special relationship with her Oma, which I thought is a centerpiece of Finell's book. Apart from the very human side, the American raised Oma also brought the U.S. close to Karin Finell as a child and prepared her for her immigration. The book is a tribute to the women who had to cope and did cope so valiantly with the conditions thrust upon them by a war which many supported, and a few loathed from the beginning, as they loathed and continued loathing the Nazi government. Finell's book also made me aware again how little we citizen can do when politicians go amok as did Hitler and all of the Nazis.
Contrasts and Subtleties: The Mundane of War.......2007-07-16
If you read all these reviews of Karin's book, you will still have many surprises as you read Goodbye to the Mermaids. The strength of Karin's narration is that she recounts the precise moments when her attitudes toward war change--and those moments shock because war mutilates reality. None of the events in this book conform to normalcy. To buy bread, for example, meant dodging bullets and bombs in occupied Berlin. Putting on a dress meant risking your life.
Karin recounts the contrasts between her family's needs and desires with the realities of war, and she does this in a subtle, detailed way. Karin wasn't just a child in the war, she was a maturing young woman whose sensibilities grow within the context of her story. She makes her reader feel the deprivation and humiliation of war. This book is one of the best I've read in a long time. It's an extraordinary work by a woman who sacrificed much of her life to war and the repercussions of it. She deserves our respect, and I feel honored to know her.
Brave, beautiful, deeply moving, and very necessary........2007-06-13
A heart-wrenching story lovingly told by Karin Finell. She relates what was for her a normal part of growing up while participating in activities of the Hitler youth, watching friends disappear, and daring to question.
Good-bye to the Mermaids is beautifully written, with gorgeously remembered details, providing a deep, rich look into life in wartime Germany that we have not seen before.
A Childhood Discovered.......2007-04-07
"Karin Finell's memoir affected me tremendously. It widened and deepened my understanding of a young child's character growing up under extraordinary (and many times extraordinarily difficult) circumstances. Finell, in her narrative, recreated so vividly the world of her youth, the places she lived in and the people she lived with, as well as her own thoughts, feelings, insights, and observations. It was as if I could hear the voice of the child Karin telling each story. Using the device of a series of "stories," by the way, seems exactly the right way to develop such ar narrative.
This is a first-rate book, beautifully written and beautifully produced by the Missouri Press. Anyone interested in the WW 2 period will be the richer for having read it, as am I. "
Average customer rating:
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The Lost Childhood: The Complete Memoir
Yehuda Nir
Manufacturer: Schaffner Press, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Ozick, Cynthia
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God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
ASIN: 0971059861 |
Book Description
This compelling memoir takes readers through the eyes of a child surviving World War II in Nazi-occupied Poland. As a nine-year-old, the author witnessed his father being herded into a truck—never to be seen again. He, his mother, and sister fled to Warsaw to live in disguise as Catholics under the noses of the Nazi SS, constantly fearful of discovery and persecution. A sobering reminder of the personal toll of the Holocaust on Jews during World War II, this book is a harrowing portrait of one child's loss of innocence. This edition contains previously unpublished content from the original text.
Average customer rating:
- This book is BACK IN PRINT!!!
- This is a great Holocaust book!!
- Best War story ever
- The Lost Childhood By: Yehuda Nir
- As Good As "Schindler's List"
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Lost Childhood: A Memoir
Yehuda Nir
Manufacturer: Berkley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
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Holocaust
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ASIN: 0425155471 |
Customer Reviews:
This book is BACK IN PRINT!!!.......2004-06-21
This extraordinary memoir is back in print! Scholastic re-issued it recently. Look for ISBN # 0439163897.
This is a great Holocaust book!!.......2003-11-26
The book The Lost Childhood is a great Holocaust book! It gives a great description of the horrible things that happened to the Jewish people. This book alone should tell you why teens should learn about the holocaust because I would never want any thing like this to happen again, and we are the future. It makes people realize that you should stand up for what you believe in and don't let people put other people down when they don't even know them.
This book is about a young boy who had to live through the Holocaust being Jewish. It tells how his mother, sister, and himself lived without knowing what happened to their father (husband), and how they went without being known as Jews. This book is very good because you get to know how it felt to be treated badly when you did nothing wrong except practice the religion you believe in. In this book they had very hard times from being sent to no one knows where to always running and hiding when they saw Germans. If you are interested in the Holocaust, this is a great book, but even if you are not this is a great dramatic adventure.
Best War story ever.......2003-04-24
this is the best World War Two story told.. I never liked history books but after i read the plot, i knew i had to read it. its true about what the person above said about reading it at night and you will not put it down until u finish it. I stayed up nights until 12, 1am to finish reading it.. i recommend everyone to read this even if you arent a fan of history. it will change your opinion.
The Lost Childhood By: Yehuda Nir.......2001-12-18
This is a very interesting book. This book is about a boy and his mother and his sister. They are all Jews, who servied the World War 2. The boy's name is Yehuda Nir. This is a hair-raising story.
Yehuda is the son of an affluent carpet manufacturer in Lwo'w, Poland. He has a nanny to take care of him and a German cook for him. He is only 9 years old. After the war started and they were forced into a smaller apartment.
Within the two years, the tide turns and the Nazi are again incontrol. Many Jews are seized on the streets, imprisoned, and executed. Yehuda's father is murdered. The family moves. Nazis sercure situations in Warsaw. His mother works as a domestic for a wealthy German playboy, catering orgies and meeting important Nazi officials.
Now their lives are turned upside down. They were living in a time where one had to be careful. They have to trust one another. Then finally there was a up rising in Warsaw. This is why I find this book interesting it is very good.
As Good As "Schindler's List".......2001-03-01
This page-turning memoir by Yehuda Nir, a New York City psychiatrist, tells the story of his family's experiences during World War II, as it masqueraded as Christians and hid from the Nazis. Nir's fascinating, well-written narrative operates on several levels. These include: the grim adventures of a boy, his sister, and their mother who are caught in a historical nightmare and are trying to survive; a psychiatrist describing how different members of his family coped with the stress of hiding in plain view; and the experiences and impressions of a normal boy growing up in an abnormal world, shadowed by the possibility of disclosure and death.
Amazingly, this bleak but inspiring story is also laced with humor. Laugh-out-loud moments are provided by the Russians, who bomb Warsaw with heavy parcels of non-parachuted food, destroying the homes of their Polish allies; and flustered German nurses near the war's end, who are distracted from detecting that Nir is Jewish by the aggressive lewdness of his fellow prisoners. Steven Spielberg, get that into a movie!
It's truly a shame this book is out of print, since it provides an accessible human slant on the important subject of Jewish experience during World War II. In my opinion, the unavailability of this book illustrates a sadly common condition in today's book industry, with editors throwing money at worthless blockbusters but not supporting books like "The Lost Childhood", which could become an adult perennial and a basic text in high school and college curriculums with just a minor marketing effort.
Book Description
A deeply moving story of one woman's search for truth and meaning in the aftermath of her father's unsolved murder.
On the night of June 22, 1986, ten-year-old Rachel Howard woke to a disturbing sight: pools of blood on the hallway carpet and a glimpse of her father clutching his stabbed throat. Stan Howard died minutes later, and his bizarre small-town murder was never solved. Rachel's father was thirty-two, a laid-back, handsome man who loved the music of Rod Stewart and had no known enemies. Faced with her family's shock, Rachel decided she would cope the only way she knew how: By keeping silent and trying to pretend the murder had never happened.
Now, seventeen years later and recently engaged, Rachel attempts to uncover for herself what happened that night. Finally reconnecting with her father's family, she sorts through her relatives' memories of his death and presses the less-than-helpful detectives. Still bewildered, she seeks the only other two people present at the murder: her former stepmother and stepbrother, neither of whom she has seen since her father's funeral. The result is a tender portrait of a father and a keen investigation of memory, truth, and how a family moves on from a tragedy for which they may never find answers.
“Homicide has lifelong effects for its secondary victims, and educating people to that fact is an essential part of the battle for victims' rights. The genres of True Crime and Memoir both need more books like The Lost Night. Rachel's memoir is important and enlightening. She is very brave for taking on the telling of this story.
--Jeanine Cummins, author of A Rip in Heaven
"From the first page to the last, I read Rachel Howard's spellbinding memoir of murder and its harrowing aftermath with my heart in my mouth. A riveting exploration of grief, suspicion, and the tangled ties that make up the modern family, her need to uncover the identity of the person responsible for the vicious stabbing death of her beloved, but flawed father compels her on a brave, emotional quest for the truth. I turned the pages late into the night, eager to follow Howard as she pursued the next clue and the next, as well as to discover how she would come to terms with her terrible loss. A clear-sighted writer, willing to admit to the gaps in fact and memory that will always remain, the true triumph of her story is the hard-won, if uneasy truce she ultimately establishes with the past."
--Anna Cypra Oliver, author of Assembling My Father: A Daughter's Detective Story
Customer Reviews:
You are there.......2006-08-18
Met the author at a book signing and was impresssed by her impeccable poise and story-telling ability. Then I went home and read the book. Wow. I had the same experience as the other readers. This is an excellent and poignant memoir.
One feels the you-are-there quality of a little girl awakening in the middle of the night to see her father covered with blood on the floor. The people in her book are like characters in a Dickens novel, yet they are (were) all very real. Howard captures the cultural milieu of Merced California in the mid '80's. Her father loved Rod Stewart with a passion and the lyrics of his songs weave through the true story of a child trying to make sense of what is going on around her.
The child matures into an adult and becomes a writer! What an awesome contribution to the memoir genre. I do hope that the killer is eventually caught.
Great combination.......2006-07-23
This is a wonderful combination of memoir and true crime. I felt as though I realy got to know the author. Her willingness to examine the fragility of memory and adjust her conclusions accordingly made her more appealing. The change in her attitudes toward the people in her life caused me to re-examine my own feelings toward people in my life. This book is a definite addition for anyone's library.
Lost and Found - a past reclaimed.......2006-02-28
Lost and Found - a past reclaimed
I finished Rachel Howard's "the lost night" at 3 this morning. From the minute I cracked its spine, the pages turned themselves, inviting me to ignore every routine chore of mine: dirty dishes, daily exercise, even meals (though I did manage to go to work and feed the cat).
Masterfully written, the book tells a riveting story of the murder of Rachel's father when she was only 10 years old. How she handled the loss of this beloved man, her protector and playpal, is a glimpse into how children cope with tragedy of this magnitude. The experience retrospectively defined Rachel, her relationship with her family and also with her stepmother Sherry, her father's third wife when he was murdered. Rachel, the product of divorce, was spending a few summer weeks at her father's home during this time. She was witness to his last waking minutes and remembered details that would replay themselves with increasing vividness as time went by.
But memory is elusive...and selective. The author comes to realize that her memories were circumscribed by the limited frame-of-reference of a young life.
What I found so compelling here is the child's perspective. I have read (and probably own!) just about every true-crime/courtroom/forensic book that exists, yet I never read such an account from a 10-year-old point-of-view. Rachel illustrates the sometimes graphic, sometimes muted terror-of-the-night children of murdered parents are heir to, their wispy and unexpressed--indeed unconscious--suspicion of significant-others, and their necessary dependencies on adults who, often not comprehending the nuances involved, believe that by trotting the kid to therapy, they absolve themselves of the pain of revisiting the circumstances themselves. In Rachel's case, her father's family remained largely silent with her about that night. They may have felt that openly speaking about the murder with someone so young would somehow legitimize it for her. In fact, their passivity had the opposite, and quite damaging, effect on a young mind hungry for assurance and validation.
Palpable throughout Rachel's memoir is its raw honesty. The writing is often brutally introspective, devoid of the self-pity and lachrymose language which the author might easily --and justifiably-have indulged. She is seeking information and answers, and by the last page, I realize she has found those things, and some peace along the way.
Therese Hercher
New York Times Sometimes wrong but not this time.......2006-02-05
William Grimes has always been one of my favorite NY Times reviewers. Although he tends to be negative, when he waxes effusive, I take notice. When I saw this....
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"As a memoirist, she succeeds BRILLIANTLY. "The Lost Night" is ENTHRALLING, a skillfully narrated story that begins as a tale of detection but quickly becomes something more."
--William Grimes, NEW YORK TIMES
I figured I'd take a chance. Well, it's been sitting on my nightstand for 6-months now and damn if it's not enthralling. Although I was hoping for a bit of a who-done-it, I couldn't put it down. The descriptions of the messed-up Central Valley(to put it delicately)were terrific. With some sex, drugs, and even some 80s Rod Stewart in the mix, for good measure, it was a joy to read.
A wonderful memoir, not a crime story!.......2005-10-23
This book is much more memoir than a "true crime" or crime investigation book. It does center itself around the author's father's murder when she was 10, but from there, it goes on to tell very well how this event affected both her life and the life of her family and extended family. I got a strong feel for the parts of California she was writing about, and for her father's large family and how they dealt with his death in their own ways.
The book also examines the issue of memory---how memory is not a set-in-stone thing---how different people remember things differently, and we can feel very sure we know how something happened, and another person is very sure it happened differently.
Some might feel unsatisfied that the murder is not solved in these pages, but I was not. That was never really the point here. This is an examination of how murder affects a family, and of the time and place and people that set up the scene. The author leaves us free to form our own opinion as to what happened, and she also is amazingly free with writing about her own changes of perspective and doubts about her feelings about the past. She is a skilled writer and sounds like a strong, caring person. I thank her for this book.
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