Tag: mental health memoirs

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Woman in Me’ by Britney Spears

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears pulls the curtain back on the making of one of the biggest pop stars the world has ever seen and reveals how her superstardom eclipsed her familial trauma.

Taking the title from the lyrics of the 2001 hit “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” from the Britney album and Crossroads soundtrack, the long-awaited memoir made headlines with the sordid details of Britney’s relationship with fellow pop star and Mouseketeer Justin Timberlake during the turn of the century where tabloid articles and paparazzi photos overtook the media landscape. But there’s more to Britney’s life story starting in Kentwood, Louisiana. Born 25 miles away in McComb, Mississippi (also R&B pop star Brandy’s birthplace), Britney is a little girl who loves singing and dancing.

The woman in me was pushed down for a long time. They wanted me to be wild onstage, the way they told me to be, and to be a robot the rest of the time. I felt like I was being deprived of those good secrets of life—those fundamental supposed sins of indulgence and adventure that make us human. They wanted to take away that specialness and keep everything as rote as possible. It was death to my creativity as an artist.

Her father, Jamie, transitions through jobs as a welder to a construction worker to a gym owner, while her mother, Lynne, runs a daycare center raising Britney and her brother, Bryan. Britney scores opportunities to audition for The All New Mickey Mouse Club and perform on Star Search. Like many future stars at the time, once these opportunities end, she is back home. Her family eventually welcomes her younger sister, Jamie Lynn. The family dynamic is volatile. Her father is an alcoholic. Her mother smokes and yells constantly. She feels the most in power when she is performing. 

“Tragedy runs in my family,” Britney writes when telling the story of her paternal grandmother, known as Jean, who was committed to an asylum by Britney’s grandfather after losing a baby. Her grandmother was 31 years old when she shot herself with a shotgun over her infant son’s grave. New York Magazine covered this story in November 2022 in a longform piece that explores Britney’s ancestral tree on the Spears side to set the background for the conservatorship that ended in November 2021. Like her grandmother, Britney suffers from mental health issues after having her two sons a year apart. She says she had been forced to take Prozac for years. She had been hospitalized, where she says she was given lithium instead. Lithium was the drug her grandmother had taken as well. And like her grandmother, the reason why her mental health had destabilized is misunderstood. 

I was a little girl with big dreams. I wanted to be a star like Madonna, Dolly Parton, or Whitney Houston. I had simpler dreams, too, dreams that seemed even harder to achieve and that felt too ambitious to say out loud: I want my dad to stop drinking. I want my mom to stop yelling. I want everyone to be okay.

One aspect that seems to have been dominated by the Justin Timberlake headlines is the mistreatment Britney endured being married to backup dancer and wannabe rapper Kevin Federline. The father of her two children, Kevin disappears into recording studios and industry parties while Britney is breastfeeding one son and is pregnant with another one. As her marriage is falling apart and her custody arrangement goes against her, paparazzi stalk her more than ever to capture photos of her in disarray. Then in 2007,  she shaves her head at a barbershop with camera lens catching the moment outside. A few weeks later, she strikes a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella. The media salivates over these incidents and brands them as erratic, but Britney blames the stress on her postpartum depression, her divorce, the death of her aunt, and her family’s failure to help her properly through the grief. Throughout the book, she clarifies her emotions during events that dominated tabloids because her voice was misconstrued or silenced when it came to defending herself. 

The memoir serves as further defense for her sanity, post-conservatorship. Now, Britney makes headlines strictly with her Instagram usage. She often tapes herself dancing and modeling clothes with smoky eyes. In the book, she explains she finally has the right to express herself through photography. She owns the images and reels she shares on social media and poses for the camera of her volition. 

I am willing to admit that in the throes of severe postpartum depression, abandonment by my husband, the torture of being separated from my two babies, the death of my adored aunt Sandra, and the constant drumbeat of pressure from paparazzi, I’d begun to think in some ways like a child.

As for her infamous relationships, she was 24 and 25 years old when she had her sons. She married Kevin at 22 years old in 2004. That was only 2½ years after her unexpected breakup with Justin. When a girl falls in love with a boy at eleven years old and reconnects with him in a relationship plastered on every tabloid page, it’s natural for judgment to lead to soul mate talk. The raw emotion on the pages of Britney’s memoir just shows how she had to grow and move on from a relationship that seemed like it could last forever. Showbusiness had gotten in the way of both her major romances, which both ended disastrously with her receiving the weight of the judgment as the woman. 

Though she discusses her most memorable tours and appearances, Britney uses the memoir to give us a picture of the life she tried to make private until it was forced into privacy with her 13-year conservatorship. She describes the loneliness of performing while under a conservatorship like serving as a reality show judge and headlining a Las Vegas residency. A conservatorship is defined in legal terms as the designation of a conservator by a court to manage the financial and personal affairs of an incapacitated or incompetent individual, minor, or older adult with limited capacity. Britney was under a conservatorship when she shouldn’t have been classified as incapacitated or incompetent since she worked under extreme pressure. When the legal battle to gain back her independence started in 2020, many fans didn’t realize what a conservatorship entailed. Now, that her father is no longer her conservator, she is free, but she lost many years of her adulthood not having the freedom to control her wealth, decide on what to put in her body, or even drive her car. 

Looking back, I think that both Justin and Kevin were very clever. They knew what they were doing, and I played right into it. That’s the thing about this industry. I never knew how to play the game. I didn’t know how to play the game.

Overall, the memoir gives Britney a chance to explain her side of the story, which was largely ignored or misconstrued by the media machine. The book is written in her voice (think her lengthy Instagram captions), where you can tell she is sorting out her feelings and emotions during difficult times of her life. She chose Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams to record the audiobook on her behalf, which is unusual, especially for a celebrity who uses her voice to opt out of recording her own story. How you use your speaking voice can vary greatly compared to how you use your singing voice. The way the entertainment industry took a young Southern girl who loved to perform and transformed her into a robot to sell millions of albums and concert tickets took an insurmountable toll on the pop star. Now, that her story is out in the open, it seems like she is setting the parameters for her life.

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what's lit

What We Learn About Brittney Griner in Her First Memoir

Basketball star Brittney Griner will be releasing a new memoir next year about her 10-month detention in a Russian prison. The release of this book will coincide with the 10th anniversary of her first memoir In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court. As the first memoir highlights the moments leading up to her newfound stardom, the second memoir will focus on the transition of becoming an unexpected political prisoner and activist.

“Readers will hear my story and understand why I’m so thankful for the outpouring of support from people across the world,” Brittney said in a press release about the memoir. “By writing this book, I also hope to raise awareness surrounding other Americans wrongfully detained abroad such as Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, Emad Shargi, Airan Berry, Shahab Dalili, Luke Denman, Eyvin Hernandez, Majd Kamalmaz, Jerrel Kenemore, Kai Li, Siamak Namazi, Austin Tice, Mark Swidan and Morad Tahbaz.”

Alfred A. Knopf, a Penguin Random House imprint, is the publisher behind the untitled memoir. The news was announced amid the WNBA draft where University of South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston was the No. 1 pick and more than a week after Brittney’s former Baylor University coach Kim Mulkey won her first championship with the Louisiana State University women’s basketball team.

While Brittney spends 2023 revving up on the court, her memoir will sure make a splash when it comes out in spring 2024 as we get rare insight into her experience as a Black gay female athlete navigating various politics in order to win back her freedom.

Pay inequity, cannabis overregulation lead to arrest

Brittney, the No. 1 WNBA draft pick in 2013, was arrested in Russia in February 2022 over charges of carrying cannabis cartridges in her luggage as she tried to fly back to the U.S. after finishing a season playing with the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg. She played overseas, like a lot of her WNBA colleagues from Candace Parker to Maya Moore, because players’ salaries average $117,500 to $215,000, according to Spotrac.

On the list, Brittney’s WNBA base salary ranks at $165,100 this year as the No. 35 top paid player, a drop in standing due to her imprisonment. The No. 35 NBA player is Deandre Ayton of the Phoenix Suns, the same city as Brittney, and ESPN reports he is earning almost $31 million this season. Though WNBA salaries increased after fans voiced concern over the reason why Brittney was playing overseas, WNBA salaries are still nowhere near NBA salaries.

Her arrest also became controversial in the court of public opinion as she brought an illegal drug into Russia, where cannabis possession translated into a nine-year prison sentence. Though she helped the country elevate its basketball game, none of that mattered amid President Vladimir Putin’s administration waging a war with neighboring Ukraine.

Russia launched its first attack against the former Soviet Union republic of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Brittney was arrested the week before on Feb. 17.

She became a political prisoner as the Biden administration went back and forth on negotiations to bring Brittney, known as BG by her friends and fans, back to the U.S. safe and sound. She came home last December after the U.S. traded her with Russia for an infamous arms dealer.

What she entails in her post-imprisonment memoir will become media fodder with Oprah Winfrey-level interviews and a constant replay of excerpts. Brittney co-wrote her memoir in 2014 with Sue Hovey, a former vice president and executive editor at ESPN, a year after joining the WNBA.

The first memoir, published by HarperCollins, detailed her upbringing in Texas, particularly around growing into her sexuality. She was raised by a father, who worked in law enforcement and lived by the law at home. Her mother seemed supportive but couldn’t protect Brittney from her father’s ignorance about how she was developing.

Living under her father’s strict roof made playing basketball at Baylor, a private Baptist university, just as difficult after she left home. She writes about her experiences of dealing with her father and college coach in the book:

“I was finally coming into my own as an adult, but before I could step forward and be exactly the person I wanted to be in public, before I could say and do the things I wanted to do, on my own terms, I had to go through some serious growing pains with the two main authority figures in my life: my dad, Raymond Griner, and my coach, Kim Mulkey.

“I love and respect them both, more than they probably know. But if I had to pick just one word to describe my relationship with each of them? Complicated. All caps COMPLICATED.”

Tension with father, coach over sexuality

Kim was the Baylor coach for 21 years. In her book, Brittney writes about how their relationship deteriorated because she felt her coach showed two faces — one for the public, one for private.

“She would call me into her office to tell me I had done something wrong — like when someone saw me kissing my girlfriend at the movies — but then she would shift the burden away from herself, trying to imply she was just the messenger and this wasn’t how she personally felt. Those conversations caused me a lot of confusion, a lot of pain.”

Amid this year’s March Madness, the championship-winning coach told ESPN she had not talked to her former player since Brittney returned from Russia. To be fair, Kim was busy coaching her team to its first national title while Brittney had just re-signed with the Phoenix Mercury.

Brittney says she had “a lot of mixed emotions” about her time at Baylor, which is located in Waco, Texas. Though she was close to home and her talent was supported on campus, the university had a policy against same-sex romantic relationships, an issue she nor her family were aware of before her enrollment.

Attending a religious school against her sexual identity ties into her time in high school, where she realized she liked girls. At home, she says her father had his own similar policy.

“There was a bit of a cold war going on between us, but I knew our relationship would become red hot if he discovered the truth about my sexuality,” she writes. “I knew if he found out, the walls would come crashing down around me. My dad has always had a very narrow view of the world, perceiving anything ‘different’ as a threat.”

Though she had a simple coming-out discussion with her mother, Brittney says she was warned to not tell her father. She says her father would say passive-aggressive statements like wondering how Kim and Baylor would react to her “being so friendly with gays.”

The relationship Brittney had with these two authoritative figures really impacted how she wanted to live in the world as a gay woman. Her intersectionality also came up with her arrest. Russia is considered to have harsh laws against same-sex relationships. We should see correlations between how she was treated in the U.S. for her identity and how she was treated in Russia as an athlete-turned-prisoner.

It begs the question how her relationship with her father has changed with her high-profile arrest since part of her identity is growing up as a daughter of a police officer. She even once had the same career ambitions to follow in law enforcement.

Also, being Black (and tattooed) as a prisoner in a country that is less than 1% Black added fuel to the fire. When Brittney returned home, she was sporting a short cropped hairdo because she had to sever her trademark locs due to the freezing temperatures in Russia. Her upcoming memoir may go in depth on her feelings about her identity being affected by the erasure of her African hairstyle.

Fame & basketball

Since she was 23 at the time of the first memoir’s release, Brittney was still young enough to dedicate the majority of the book on her coming of age in Houston.

Like many teenagers, Brittney suffered from depression, not quite understanding the toll. She writes about how she was bullied for being tall and wanting to dress in clothes considered appropriate for boys.

“They were constantly making fun of how I looked and dressed, how I walked and talked,” she writes. “I’m not sure I can express exactly how I felt in those moments, because I usually went numb. When you’re on the receiving end of insults every day, they chip away at your self-esteem.”

With her 6’8 height, Brittney started playing basketball in high school, which is almost considered a late bloomer for anyone serious about pursuing the sport seriously in college and beyond.

“The growing confidence I felt off the court carried over to basketball. And the more I improved as a player, the better I felt about the person I was becoming,” she writes. “It all just fed on itself. After fighting and struggling my way through middle school, I now had a new sense of purpose.”

As she became a basketball megastar at Baylor, her sexuality and gender were questioned with higher intensity at the university.

“We could acknowledge, in a general way, that people were questioning my gender, calling me a freak, a man, a female impostor. And yet I couldn’t talk about being gay,” she writes. “Most of the time, I was on autopilot with the media, because I couldn’t really show who I was of the often portrayed—just a big, fun-loving, goofy kid—felt like a two-dimensional version of the real me.”

In the book, Brittney writes about her time playing on the Zhejiang Chouzhou Golden Bulls in China while on break from playing on the Phoenix Mercury, the team she signed with in 2013. She describes how normal it is for WNBA players to play overseas to earn close to equivalent salaries of NBA players. Though she is a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Team USA, she still had to play in Russia, which ultimately led to her arrest.

Regardless of the controversy around her arrest and release, readers may be interested in her captivity in a strict foreign prison as a gay Black female celebrity and how that experience led to the evolution of her speaking up for Americans also imprisoned under trumped-up charges abroad.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Acne’ by Laura Chinn

Acne by Laura Chinn tells the story of the television writer/actress’ tumultuous childhood and young adulthood and how her struggles were reflected in a severe case of acne. 

Laura Chinn created and starred in the 2019 Pop TV sitcom Florida Girls (think Broad City with Florida Woman adventures) that unfortunately received the ax during the Covid-19 pandemic. The entertainer, who has written for shows like The Mick and Children’s Hospital and acted in shows like Grey’s Anatomy and My Name Is Earl, actually was born in the Los Angeles area where she lived with her “hippie” parents and older brother Max. Though her mother is White and her father is Black, she doesn’t get a sense of her biracial identity until she’s eight-years-old. She never noticed the concept of race since everyone in her house has a different complexion. While Max has brown skin and is often confused for “Mexican or Hawaiian,” Laura has fair skin and dirty blonde curls, so she’s considered outwardly White. Growing up in La Crescenta, she is homeschooled with other kids in her neighborhood. Her childhood is disrupted when her mother announces the family is moving to Clearwater, Florida, the best place for Scientologists like themselves after Los Angeles. Laura, Max, and their mother move to Clearwater while their father stays behind to tie up loose ends. 

Laura’s father never moves to Clearwater as Laura navigates her new preteen life in a new place. She starts to notice red pimples erupt on almost every surface of her face. How can this be? She and her family eat a strict healthy diet. Her father blames his genetics for the acne since he says he had the same skin condition as a teen. Scientology tells Laura and her family that internal toxins are clogging her pores. She tries to cleanse the acne that is putting a damper on her social life as she befriends girls like Tori who also have lopsided family situations. 

At thirteen years old, Laura is going through the abandonment issues stemming from her father’s decision to not join them in Clearwater. To make matters worse, Max moves back to Los Angeles and stays with their father. There, her brother is diagnosed with a brain tumor. He has to have a surgery that he may not wake up from. Laura and her mother fly from Tampa to Los Angeles to be by Max’s side. He survives the surgery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, but he has a mountain of health issues that keeps Laura and her mother in a hotel as they witness her father parading his barely-adult, chicken nugget-addicted girlfriend Chardonnay around the intensive care unit. Laura returns to Clearwater alone to go back to school. She gets picked up by her mother’s alcoholic boyfriend Joe who drops her off at home with some money for food. 

In the short time of raising herself as her parents deal with Max’s cancer diagnosis, Laura is stealing and drinking alcohol with Tori and other friends who are already having sexual relations with boys at school. Laura’s acne is still on a volcanic level as she uses makeup to cake up her face and go on living her unsupervised life. Then Max’s cancer progresses in other parts of his brain, so the family who again tap into their Scientologist teachings to find alternative healing methods decide to move to Tijuana for a form of chemotherapy not approved in the U.S. Laura drops out of the ninth grade to join her family in Mexico. 

After realizing she’s better off finishing her education rather than helping Max who has their mother as a caregiver, Laura moves back to Clearwater to finish her freshman year. This time, Joe moves in, but Laura is still raising herself de facto. Due to the miracle of Accutane, teenage antics progress like her losing her virginity.  

Accutane had healed my face, neck, chest, and back; it seemed like a wonder pill until, like with all pills, the side effects kicked in. First it was dry skin, then peeling skin, then every day I would shed my entire face like a snake. My lips were painfully cracked and bloody, so for the third time in my life, I didn’t smile for months. Then my vision started to get weird. 

Her quick-fix cure makes her think she has cancer like her brother, whose diagnosis came from blurry vision, but she doesn’t. She develops suicidal thoughts while on the medication and while watching her friends find boyfriends she can’t seem to attract. She’s realizing her neighborhood is full of dysfunctional people, including the woman next door who burns her house down to cover up her husband’s murder, as her own mother and brother return to Clearwater unchanged by the failed treatment in Mexico. Laura has to put aside her acne and adolescence to help her mother care for her dying brother, but she still finds herself caring more about what her friends are doing and how her skin is doing. 

The older she gets, the more she sees being a high school dropout is not enough. Her father agrees and invites her to live with her half-sister and her niece in Woodland Hills, a section of Los Angeles. Laura finally feels like she’s being supervised but again she can’t help but think what’s going on in her Clearwater social circle. She eventually moves back to Clearwater. Then she gets her GED and tells everyone she’s going to be a famous actress in Hollywood, so back to Los Angeles she goes. But she breaks her arm, so that means back to Clearwater. Despite what’s going on with her family and friends and her face, she has a knack for acting that slips behind the pages. 

Once she permanently stays in Los Angeles, makeup artists on sets complain about her acne. Thanks to her father, she heads to the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre to undergo a rehab experience to clear up her acne. She feels imprisoned by her acne. It’s not until she realizes all the physical and metaphorical losses she has experienced over the years had somehow manifested into an extreme case of acne.

Now I forgive with a deep intensity and a passion. I take all the money, effort, and time I was putting toward microdermabrasion, facials, and benzoyl peroxide and I put it all toward learning how to forgive. I honestly wish I could bottle forgiveness and sell it; I’d put Proactiv out of business in a week. 

If you ever watched Florida Girls, you will see the comedic messiness there in the pages of Laura’s memoir except her real-life version of events seem more depressing as she details her life as a teen practically unmonitored because of her brother’s unthinkable disease. Her friends experiment and indulge in drugs and sex at a very young age that the peer pressures stunt their growth. The conflict of being a selfish teenager while having to care for her family is deeply realized since most teen girls would be the same way with wanting to focus on boys and controlling their acne to avoid what’s going on at home. 

We see Laura’s mother as the main caregiver for Max despite her alcoholic boyfriend turned husband in the house and her ex-husband unable to cope with his son slipping away. Laura helps as much as she can, especially when her brother’s health deteriorates to the point he is blind, deaf, and immobile. It’s heartbreaking to see the transition of her athletic, skateboard-loving brother becoming a very sick young adult who can’t take care of himself. With her life divided between two places that can be difficult to survive in, Laura sees more tragedy within her family and her friend group as she tries to establish herself in Hollywood. 

Overall, the memoir connects the dots on a common skin condition that has been relegated to teenage hormonal activity. The author spends her lifetime digging deeper for the reason why her face is covered in pimples on top of pimples, quickly recognizing that her friends who are the same age as her are not dealing with the exact issue but they do have their own issues. It takes years for her to classify acne as her visible issue as she overcomes abandonment and loneliness growing up in an interracial, Scientologist, bicoastal, divorced family. Her love for acting, even in the book, is weaved in and out because her environment is overwhelming her. It’s impressive that she, like many people who had announced they were heading to Hollywood to be a big star, actually overcame the obstacles to achieve her dream that’s still in incubation. 

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’ by Jennette McCurdy

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy is an eye-opening memoir examining the abuse the Nickelodeon star said she endured from the mother who forced her into Hollywood. 

Jennette McCurdy starred in the Nickelodeon series iCarly (currently in reboot mode on Paramount+ without her) for five seasons from 2007-2012 as Sam Puckett, the supportive, food-loving friend of Miranda Cosgrove’s Carly whose internet show is a viral success. She even scored a spin-off with fellow Nickelodeon star Ariana Grande called Sam & Cat that only lasted a season from 2013-2014 with Ariana being on the brink of pop stardom. Despite finding herself famous at a young age, Jennette never wanted it. 

Acting in Hollywood is her mother’s dream. The McCurdys live in Garden Grove, an hour and a half away from the entertainment epicenter in nearby Orange County, but they’re living the low-income life in Jennette’s father’s family home with Jennette, her mother Debra, sometimes her father, her mother’s parents, and her three brothers. By the time Jennette is two years old, Debra is battling breast cancer. As the family copes with the grim diagnosis, they start going back to church. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints becomes the sanctuary Jennette connects with. Now that they’re practicing Mormons again, the family feels blessed when Debra goes into remission. But her mother is still not happy, especially with Jennette’s father who seems unable to provide what they need. Frustrated, Debra would complain that her parents wouldn’t let her go to Hollywood, again a short distance away. Then one day six-year-old Jennette says she’ll go to Hollywood for her mother. She knows this will make her mother happy.

They go on casting calls, where Debra is already upset that the untrained Jennette isn’t getting speaking roles right away. Like most actors, Jennette is starting out in the background. She transitions to higher-level background work when she appears gloomy in a film’s photo shoot; that’s what the director wanted from another child actor who couldn’t look as gloomy as Jennette. By this time, Jennette has her gloominess down pat as she feels too old for her overbearing mother to be going to the bathroom with her to clean her up and showering with her. 

To help her stay small for child acting roles, her mother tells her about “calorie restriction” and how she can eat 1,000 calories a day or less. Together, mother and daughter are barely eating full meals. At eleven, Jennette starts losing weight at a rapid pace. A casting director warns her mother that Jennette may have an eating disorder. But her mother waves the concern off. Even Jennette’s doctor advises her mother to help Jennette with her eating issues. Again, her mother ignores the advice. 

After a series of TV and film appearances, Jennette scores her first leading role as Sam Puckett in iCarly. The pilot episode airs when she’s fifteen years old. Right away, her mother is discouraging a friendship between Jennette and Miranda, the show’s star who already made a name for herself on the Nickelodeon sitcom Drake & Josh, because she sees Miranda as troublesome, accusing her of not believing in God. Jennette feels conflicted about wanting to be friends with her co-star and being a good Mormon daughter. It’s like the two versions of her can’t coexist. She befriends Miranda anyway through secret AOL instant messages after spending days on set with her. 

As the show grows in popularity, the more famous Jennette becomes. That translates to more opportunities for the rising teen star like heading to Nashville for a country music recording contract that doesn’t last, being introduced to alcohol by iCarly’s creator Dan Schneider who is unnamed but was investigated for similar on-set abuse allegations last year, and running off with a thirty-something show producer who guilts her for him breaking up with his girlfriend of five years. Jennette’s quick introduction to adulthood forces her mother to disown her. Her mother again is battling breast cancer and looks for a way to edge Jennette out of stardom due to her bad behavior by trying to steal her mostly tween fanbase. 

The book starts with Jennette whispering to her unconscious dying mother that she finally reached their goal weight of eighty-nine pounds. By this time, the anorexia and bulimia has ravaged Jennette’s body to the point she doesn’t know how to eat and enjoy a meal. The “calorie restriction” her mother taught her to keep up with Hollywood standards still has a hold on her, so much so that boyfriends encourage her to seek therapy in order to establish healthy relationships. In therapy, she learns about how abusive her mother was by not only teaching her dangerous eating habits but controlling her every move in order for her to be a success in Hollywood. Even after Debra’s death in 2013, Jennette learns that her mother hid a secret that forces her on another journey. What may have been out of love was toxic, so toxic that Jennette realizes she never knew who she really was, just the version of her that wanted to make her mother happy. 

The comedic yet heart-wrenching title of the memoir helps normalize the mother-daughter relationship that isn’t as rosy as a lot of portrayals in the media. We see more stories where mothers dote on their daughters, and daughters call their mothers their heroines. But for many daughters, their mothers push their ideas of perfection, especially about their bodies, onto their daughters that creates self-loathing that morphs into mental illness. In the author’s case, her mother’s constant critiques on her body and her acting skills forced her into a downward spiral of eating disorders. 

The mothers with their ideas of perfection usually feel they can’t be as perfect as they want to be, so their daughters have to be that perfect. We see Jennette’s mother become disappointed about her life path, feeling she was unable to take on Hollywood herself because her mother told her not to. Jennette details the frustration of dealing with her mother’s mother after her mother dies. The drama-queen antics seem hereditary when her grandmother is upset that Jennette wants to quit acting and undo financial decisions that no longer serve her as a former actor. The generational trauma of these women not feeling able to fulfill their dreams falls onto Jennette as she realizes she never had a chance to figure out her own dreams. Her formative years are gone; they had been spent on making Debra’s dreams come true as Debra read Woman’s World magazines in on-set trailers and networked with other celebrity momagers like Barbara Cameron, the mother of Full House star Candace Cameron Bure and Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron, who becomes Jennette’s onetime agent. 

Overall, this memoir explores the complex ties between a daughter and her mother with the backdrop of Hollyweird contributing to their dysfunctional relationship. It’s also a memoir where the author has come to terms with her feelings about her mother, hence the controversial title that should be seen as honest. In abusive relationships, once the abuser is gone, then the person who was abused can heal. This book, which was born out of the author’s one-woman shows, is about the healing process of self-discovery.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘Hooked’ by Sutton Foster

Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life by Sutton Foster

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Read more book reviews like this on my blog shelit.com

Hooked by Sutton Foster dives deep into the Broadway and TV star’s poignant moments punctuated by her love for crafting and how it helped her stay sane.

Known for her head-turning Broadway starring roles and her turn in sexy bookish TV series Younger where she plays a 40-something passing as a millennial, Sutton Foster has written a memoir about her rise in entertainment and how crocheting helped along the way. Growing up in the South then the Midwest, she moved often with her family that included her older brother Hunter, also a Broadway veteran; their agoraphobic mother, and their father who seemed to be under the thumb of his wife’s undiagnosed mental health condition. Though her mother doesn’t want to face society, Sutton and her brother are placed in youth theater to exercise their energy. They fall in love with the theater, and we go on the adventure of seeing Sutton evolve into a professional actor at seventeen. She goes on her first tour in her senior year of high school for a musical, where she grows homesick amid battling catty girls who despise her energy. After dropping out of Carnegie Mellon, she finds herself lost trying to figure out her next step, so she journals and crochets. She eventually returns to her theater work where her risk of being the understudy of the Broadway run of Thoroughly Modern Millie leads to her becoming the lead and winning her first Tony Award.

The crafting is threaded throughout her story. She describes some of her hardest moments and how crafting became therapy. A chunk of her latter story surrounds her fertility hardships. While deciding on adoption, she is honest about the anxiety of becoming her mother and not becoming a mother in case the birth mother decides to keep the baby. All those swirling emotions motivates her to sew a blanket for her potential daughter. She stops at one point when she hears a friend fails to secure the baby she intended to adopt; crocheting the blanket when her adoption is up in the air is too much to bear.

Another underlying theme of the memoir is Sutton’s relationship with her mother. She learns crafting from her mother, recalling a stitched Strawberry Shortcake bookmark she received.

That was during the peak of my obsession with the red-haired cartoon character. I had coloring books, figurines, and even a garbage pail, all store-bought. I find it so moving that my mother took the time to meticulously stitch that sweet girl in her poufy pink bonnet and white frilly apron into existence. She added my first and last name in red thread and a row of hearts in pink and green, then finished the piece with a calico border. I don’t recall my mother saying “I love you” often. But I do know that she poured her love for me into that bookmark.

The palpable pain jumps through the author’s voice and on the pages of the book of how she had a difficult relationship with her mother and how that impacted the entire family dynamic and followed her onstage. She talks about how her mother only saw her once on Broadway while her high school drama teacher flew to see her perform on several occasions. Her mother didn’t acknowledge her brother’s eventual wife or talk to her brother for years because the couple had lived together before marriage “in sin.” After her mother’s death, Sutton soon starts her own family in fear she will become the mother she had. She also witnesses her father coming out of his unintended shell and living the life he always wanted.

Overall, the crafty memoir hits the emotional nerve mostly with the author’s relationship with the stage and the family she loves. The crocheting adventures and recipes seem to be a bit detached from the story. This is really a story of following your dreams. Sutton even has a few run-ins with her idol, Broadway and TV actress Patti LuPone, and conducts an interview featured in the book. So while you may want to head to your local craft store and learn to crochet to reduce anxiety like the author, you’ll connect more with her inspirational backstory.

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what's lit

Can You Tell Your Story Your Way? Mariah Carey Faces Lawsuits From Siblings Over Her Memoir

Songstress Mariah Carey enjoyed debut author success when her long-awaited memoir hit bookshelves last September. But the memoir that dives deep into how she found her voice in what she calls an abusive family environment has led to lawsuits from her siblings.

While promoting The Meaning of Mariah Carey with Oprah Winfrey on an Apple TV+ special last fall, Mariah said after years of therapy she calls Alison her “ex-sister” and Morgan her “ex-brother.” Her so-called former siblings now are suing her in New York Supreme Court over allegedly false and defamatory claims.

News broke this week that Morgan Carey, Mariah’s older brother, filed a lawsuit on March 3 against Mariah, co-author Michaela Angela Davis, Andy Cohen of Bravo fame whose imprint published the book, and Macmillan Publishers that owns Andy Cohen Books. Mariah’s older sister, Alison Carey, also had filed her own lawsuit on Feb. 3 solely against Mariah.

In the memoir, the singer describes several alleged violent interactions with her siblings. From the descriptions, lawsuits were expected, but it begs the question of how a memoirist can write her own story and portray real-life characters the way she interpreted their behavior and personality.

What Are the Allegations?

First, in Alison’s two-page complaint, she is representing herself and asking the court to have her sister pay $1.25 million in damages plus money for legal costs. She has issue with the chapter in Mariah’s memoir called “Dandelion Tea,” which is dedicated to Mariah’s allegedly dangerous experiences with her sister, who she claims tossed boiling hot water on her when she was 12 years old that made her black out and develop third-degree burns.

Alison says she was a troubled preteen, but she blames their mother, Patricia Carey, for allegedly forcing her to “attend terrifying middle-of-the-night satanic worship meetings that included ritual sacrifices and sexual activity.” Alison goes on to write that she has been diagnosed with a series of mental and physical health diseases. She says Mariah “used her status to attack her penniless sister” and “callously dismisses” her as an ex-sister.

Morgan also references in his lawsuit about being called publicly by Mariah as her ex-brother. He claims Mariah falsely depicted him as a “physically violent man.” In his own words, he alleges their father, Alfred Roy Carey, was the abuser and the reason he was placed in a children’s psychiatric center, a revelation Morgan says is an invasion of privacy. He says he believes he was portrayed as a stereotypical violent Black male for Mariah to “play the victim card and curry favor with the Black Lives Matter movement.” As part of the lawsuit, he attached a page of photos from over Mariah’s career of them together appearing happy to dispute his sister’s allegations.

Memory or Mismemory?

Memoirists have to reach for memories and describe those memories and the meaning behind what happened and how it impacted their lives. But as humans our minds may misinterpret an old memory and transform it. That’s a concern that impacts any writer writing their own true story.

“This is because memory is not just about retrieving stored information,” reads a Scientific American article on the unintentional phenomenon of misremembering, or the act of remembering incorrectly. “Our minds normally construct memories using a blend of remembered experiences and knowledge about the world. Our memories can be frazzled, though, by new experiences that end up tangling the past and the present.”

Should a writer discuss what they plan to tell in their story with people who will have a major appearance? It’s a question about how much to reveal about someone and how similar are the memories you share with that someone to ensure the right description makes it into the book. But if you’re not close to that particular someone, then reaching out can get murky. Also, reaching out could mean that someone wants their name and any reference to the event they’re mentioned in to be out of the book, subtracting some of the author’s freedom to express their story.

Your Truth or Their Truth?

Both of Mariah’s siblings say they weren’t contacted by the press for their sides of the story nor were given a copy of the unpublished book to verify any information.

There are memoirs, especially celebrity ones, that share private information about others without substituting names. Actress Demi Moore in her 2019 memoir Inside Out, for example, wrote she had taken actor Jon Cryer’s virginity. This aspect, of course, exploded in the media, but Jon issued a correction on Twitter saying he lost his virginity in high school before meeting Demi.

For Demi, her mismemory was forgiven though it involved sexual information that’s usually preferred to remain private.

Mariah hints at the alleged situation with her family in “Petals” off her 1999 Rainbow album.

Who Will Win?

When the lawsuits spill in claiming false and defamatory statements after a memoir is published, it’s hard to say how the court battle will go down. Most lawsuits head toward settlement as in we may never hear the result of the settlement if Mariah and her siblings believe that’s the best route to resolution.

In 2003, Augusten Burroughs published his memoir, Running with Scissors, that mentioned his time living with a family that he gave a fictional name. In the family’s chapter, he recounts abuse, drug use, and overall dysfunction. The real family filed a defamation and invasion of privacy lawsuit against the author and his publisher St. Martin’s Press. The author argued his memories were as accurate as he remembered, therefore what he wrote was true. The $2 million lawsuit settled outside of court with the author saying in his apology that the family’s memories were “different from my own,” The New York Times reported in 2007. The memoir became a movie starring Alec Baldwin and Annette Bening.

Mariah told The Hollywood Reporter in December amid her Apple TV+ Christmas special that she’s in talks to adapt her memoir for the screen. This is before the lawsuits were filed that may or may not impact any future projects, especially around the division of profits if that becomes part of the probable settlements.

If you are working on a memoir and worried about your memories sparking lawsuits, here are some resources to check out:

A Writer’s Guide to Defamation and Invasion of Privacy, Writer’s Digest

How Not to Get Sued for Your Memoir, HuffPost

Writing Memoirs—What You Need to Know to Avoid Being Sued, Self Publishing School 

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying’ by Bassey Ikpi


I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying by Bassey Ikpi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I share this with people often. I give them the suggestion: Allow yourself morning. I tell them it means that today may have been a rolling ball of anxiety and trembling, a face wet and slick with tears, but if you could get to morning, if you could allow yourself a new day to encourage a change, then you can get through it. Allow yourself morning.

“I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying” by Bassey Ikpi is a poetically written collection of essays reflecting the author’s yearslong struggle with mental illness. It has an attention-keeping rhythm as it tells the story of the author’s life from childhood in Nigeria to childhood in the United States to adulthood marred by mood swings that lead to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Bassey’s journey starts in Nigeria with her family, but one of her early memories of not being able to point out her father in a room of people marks more similar moments in the book where she feels something is off but can’t place what that is. One of the moments that sticks out in her American childhood is when she’s watching the Challenger blast off then explode in 1986 with the first teacher astronaut, a well-known national tragedy. She’s shaken and remains shaken that life could be snatched immediately and, she like many other children during that time, didn’t know why she was witnessing such a catastrophe. But she also knows it bothers her more than other children. Her adulthood in New York City has moments of not wanting to deal with people and not understanding why as if she makes a living as a traveling poet. She eventually receives a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression. There’s a longtime hospital visit. There’s a setback then another. There’s always the desire to be “normal,” where mental illness doesn’t subtract her from living her life the way she wants to.

How she tells her personal story is striking as other people fade in the background but play a role simultaneously. It’s an issue I’ve noticed in memoirs, where writers tell their stories by mentioning major and minor characters but emphasize the pain those characters planted onto their lives. It becomes obvious that not only forgiveness hangs in the balance but also the realization that this person you mentioned doesn’t care or even remembers you or what they did to you. In my opinion, this takes away from memoirists’ stories, but Bassey makes sure to let the reader know she’s the main character, and she takes responsibility for the journey of understanding her brain chemistry and that she will sometimes have things under control and sometimes they’ll be out of her control and that’s just how it is for her.

This book is recommended for anyone interested in learning more about mental illness or living with mental illness. I listened to the audiobook with Bassey narrating her story. Overall, the story is relatable about how to conquer the obstacles that come with life and trying to be better at seeing them for what they are and reacting the way you should.

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