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FROM THE LION'S MOUTH

Name: FROM THE LION'S MOUTH
Author: Julia Hoeffler Welton
ISBN: 978-1502521149

HEALING FROM TRAUMA, ELECTROSHOCK, SCAPEGOATING, AND GRIEF IN A DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY AND PSYCHIATRIC SYSTEM

by Julia Hoeffler Welton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 9, 2014

The teenage years are often marked by difficult, confusing physical and mental changes, which often cause minor, and...

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A harrowing memoir of mental and medical abuse.

The teenage years are often marked by difficult, confusing physical and mental changes, which often cause minor, and temporary, family strife. When author Welton was a teenager, however, her emotionally abusive parents interpreted her normal, adolescent moodiness, sleepiness and occasional bouts of sadness as mental illness. On a trip home from college, the author was whisked away to a mental institution, where she was treated with powerful psychotropic drugs and electroshock therapy. While there, she learned to adhere to her doctors’ expectations for “improvement,” even if it came at the expense of her own individual voice and authority. Under the dubious care of a psychiatrist, she underwent 66 electroshock treatments in less than 10 years—treatments that damaged her memory and caused severe post-traumatic stress disorder. As she matured, however, she embarked on a journey to heal herself physically and emotionally, finding solace in music, religion, her academic work, the love of her friends and the sympathetic responses of caring therapists. When she was diagnosed with cancer, however, flashbacks of her previous violent, inhumane treatment made fighting the disease even more traumatic. Welton’s memoir doesn’t shy away from ugly truths about the ways that mental illness was understood and treated in the not-so-distant past, nor does it sugarcoat the experience of having two deeply miserable alcoholic and abusive parents. The author’s research also serves her well, as her myriad references to science and art give readers a well-rounded approach to a complex topic. The writing is fluid and often lovely despite the horror of the subject matter (“As Larkin hurried to turn on the oxygen, he brushed against the curtain, pulling it back slightly, and I saw a man on the gurney with a plastic mask on his face”). Overall, Welton’s search for peace and forgiveness will likely inspire others looking for ways to heal from childhood trauma.

Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2014

ISBN: 978-1502521149

Page Count: 156

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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BLACK BOY

A RECORD OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945

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This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.

It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.

Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.

Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945

ISBN: 0061130249

Page Count: 450

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.