An inspirational, sharp, and disarmingly humorous account about taekwondo and mental health.
An organizational development consultant battling mental illness finds hope in martial arts training in this debut memoir.
“To be frank: I’m crazy,” declares Gibson in her prologue, “and my biggest challenges have stemmed from what being crazy makes me do.” Raised in Snyder, Texas, the author describes being “turned inward” as a child, experiencing anxiety that gave way to depression. As a teen, she displayed behavior that she now recognizes had the markings of bipolar disorder, but she only began contemplating suicide after starting college. Reluctant to receive counseling, Gibson figured that she could handle her problems on her own. A successful and fiercely independent “career girl,” she only truly reached out at the age of 31, when a romantic hiccup led to an “epic” breakdown. Alongside finding a therapist, Gibson reconnected with the taekwondo grandmaster who oversaw the dojang where she trained as a child. The author recounts her progression to becoming a black belt in a journey that is punctuated by injury and romantic instability. But through taekwondo, Gibson gained the self-understanding to “kick ass” in other parts of her life. The subject matter of this memoir is understandably dark, with the author candidly describing her lowest moments, such as “drinking whiskey for dinner and sobbing incoherently into the phone” to her “worried parents.” Yet this is countered by a stylistic approach that is refreshingly buoyant and self-aware: “In case anyone thinks the white belt months were a 1980s movie montage of me doing push-ups and high kicks and high-fiving other students set to cheesy inspirational music, think again.” Naturally humorous, Gibson is also capable of elegant, emotionally communicative prose: “The lyrical beauty of the movement, the expressive focus, and the mind-body connection of taekwondo seeped into the marrow of my bones.” Some readers may not take to the author’s casual narrative style. At one point, she instructs them unnecessarily to “flip back to Chapter One if you don’t remember,” but this adds to the affability of her writing. Gibson’s sharp-witted, tenacious personality radiates throughout this spirited book, and her determination should prove contagious, spurring readers to discover a pathway through which they can combat mental illness and discover their true selves.
An inspirational, sharp, and disarmingly humorous account about taekwondo and mental health.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-028-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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