Episode 141: Hard-Knock Life Memoirs

KIM: Hi everyone, welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I'm Kim Askew, here with my co-host Amy Helmes hi.

AMY: I'm excited about today's topic actually, Kim, you sort of know, I think about my particular love of nonfiction, quote unquote survival books, right?

KIM: Yeah, it's kind of an area where we diverge in taste. 

AMY: Right. I'm into it. You're not? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm talking like polar expeditions. Ernest Shackleton, Lost City of Z, all that kind of stuff. And there's a couple of titles just recently out that I'm very excited for, one's called Wanderlust: Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, A Lost Age, and it's by Reid Mitenbuller. I can't wait to read this. There's another one called The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann, and he also wrote Lost City of Z, so yeah, all these books about people out in the wild, on their own, exploring uncharted waters, 

KIM: Wait, have you read? Have you read Patrick Lee Fermor?

AMY: No, what's

KIM: Oh my God, I think our tastes will converge in this. He was an adventurer. I think he was a spy at one point. Like an early 20th century kind of guy and, oh, you would love this. I have some of his books and has writing won tons of awards. But a lot of his adventures took place like around World War I, World War II.

AMY: I love it. 

KIM: Yeah. Oh, you would totally love it.

AMY: I don't even like to go camping really. So it's, it's very funny 

KIM: I know, I I, know. I'm the same. We, yeah. Yes, I'm the same. 

AMY: It's something that I kind of like to read in my cozy living room, witnessing somebody else who has just kind of tested the outer limits of human endurance. know, how much your body can take, how much your mind can take. Because a lot of it's a mind game. Anyway, that's not even what the topic of today's episode is really about. 

KIM: No. 

AMY: But it is related because sometimes the most fraught journey is simply making it to adulthood.

KIM: Hell yeah.

AMY: So I've just happened to read a number of memoirs by people who survived very unusual, traumatic, or deeply troubled childhoods, and for the sake of this episode, I just decided to call them Hard Knock Life memoirs. And there is kind of a connection, the idea of how much you can take psychologically. 

KIM: Mm-hmm.

AMY: You know, that Tolstoy line, All happy families are alike, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique way. 

KIM: Of course. Yes.

AMY: That's true and that's why these books always make for fascinating reads, if told the right way by a gifted writer, I think. 

KIM: Oh yeah. Okay, so right off the top of my head, I'm thinking of some classic works. I'm thinking Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. There's Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. There's so many.

AMY: There's so many books in that vein, right?

KIM: Right. So what other ones have you been reading recently?

AMY: Okay, so a few of these books were absolute bestsellers that our listeners will have known or read. But I run into people like, Oh, have you read this? And people say, No, I never heard of it. So just on the off chance that people have never heard of these, I'm gonna say 'em. Anyway, so the first one was Educated by Tara Westover. That came out a few years ago. And I'll tell you, I think I first saw it in an airport bookstore, and that's why I I didn't read it.

KIM: That's exactly the same for me. I thought, 

AMY: Too mainstream. 

KIM: like it.

AMY: I just was like, No, I'm not interested. Um, so it was available on audiobook and I remembered my friend saying that was pretty good. So I was like, uh, I'll give it a shot. It is so good. So basically the author. She was the child of fundamentalist Mormon parents who are living off the grid in Idaho. They don't trust government. They are survivalists. They don't believe in formal education, highly skeptical of the outside world. So her knowledge of the world is very insular. You cannot believe all the things that happened to her, living out in the middle of nowhere with these crazy, crazy parents. And long story short, it's not a spoiler, it's like the premise of the book. She goes on to earn her PhD from Cambridge University.

KIM: Oh, that is so cool. I do wanna read 

AMY: true story of triumph. So I enjoyed that. So then I happened to see another one that was compared to Educated. It maybe was on a list, like if you like Educated, you'll like, this one. Again, I don't know how I didn't know about it because it was on The New York Times bestseller list for seven years. It's by Jeanette Walls. It's called The Glass Castle. Have you heard of it?

KIM: You know what? Yes. I don't know anything about it. I know I must have seen it in bookstores for years because I picture the cover even.

AMY: Why do we do this where we see like 

KIM: it too much, that's what happens. If we see it too much, we just get over. It's like too much for us and we just don't wanna see it. Because it's like being pushed too 

AMY: it seems 

KIM: something. So we think 

AMY: I'm, 

KIM: If it's everywhere, it's too mainstream.

AMY: Okay, so this one came out in 2005. She is a New York City journalist. Like a celebrity gossip columnist, lives on Park Avenue, but her background is the complete reverse of that. Her story is unfreaking believable. You just keep saying, No, there's no way, there's no way that happened. Same idea, the dad danced to the beat of his own drummer, I guess you could say. The mom was an artist. They had no money. She was hungry all the time. This one was turned into a movie recently starring Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts as the crazy parents. Um, the parents are kind of geniuses though. It kind of like both Educated and The Glass Castle, what I love about them both is that they tell story in very matter of fact ways. They just tell you what happened. And they let the reader make the judgment calls on it. You know what I mean? And that, that makes it more powerful in a

KIM: Yeah. You don't feel like they're trying to like blame someone and get you on their side.

AMY: And they're not trying to milk emotions or anything like

KIM: Because that's the thing I have sometimes trouble with.

AMY: No, and I will say also they're not upsetting to read. Because they did survive it and going through it, they don't know any different, they don't realize that that's not how the world is. 

KIM: Right. Yeah. And they always say, children are so adaptable.

AMY: And 

KIM: they just kind. It's like, that's what you know, so that's your life

AMY: Yeah, exactly. Most of us have very comfortable childhoods, but like you said, the resilience, it empowers you in a certain

KIM: Yeah. Trial by fire and they come out of it and then they're able to draw on that in whatever way creatively for their lives.

AMY: Yeah, and Jeanette Walls actually has a new novel out, Hang the Moon. It's set in Prohibition Era Virginia, and it's inspired by her moonshine grandparents, who also kind of factor in The Glass Castle a little bit. So now I wanna read that too, because Glass Castle it's really one of the better books I've read in the past year, like not for the podcast,

like 

KIM: definitely am going to be reading it. So I, I mean, you've, you've sold me completely. I, I for sure wanna read that as soon as

AMY: Yeah. And even you not liking non-fiction as much. I think you'll really, you'll find it beautiful. 

KIM: Yeah. So what else? 

AMY: Okay. So another one that was intriguing because it involves kind of a lost lady of lit. Um, this one is called An Abbreviated Life, and the woman who wrote it, Ariel Leve, l e v e. So I think that's pronounced Leave or "Lev" I'm not sure, or Levy. She grew up on the opposite end of the spectrum from these first two books. She grew up with money. Her mother was a well regarded American author, a kind of literary phenom. They lived in New York City. Um, Philip Roth was a big fan of the mother's work. I will say the daughter and the memoirist, she does not identify who her mother is. 

KIM: Oh, that is interesting. 

AMY: Now, obviously the internet exists so.

KIM: to figure it

AMY: Well, you don't even have to try. 

KIM: it and it comes up?

AMY: Yeah, you can just Google it. But because the author doesn't identify her, I'm not gonna identify her as well for this podcast, just to, to follow suit. Google it if you want to. So her childhood was hard in an altogether different way. The mom was a narcissist, had boundary issues and I would say it's an example of geniuses don't necessarily make terrific parents, you know? So the book is about the trauma that she suffered as a result of being raised by this woman, and then how she found a way to spiritually heal and kind of separate herself from her mother. So one more that I wanna mention because I just read it recently once I started getting on this, bandwagon, is called North of Normal by a woman. I know that's a great title. Um, the author is Cea Sunrise Person. And that name kind of might give you a little hint of what her childhood was like because she was living With her hippie family who were very into nudity and free love and all the drugs basically. Lived in teepees, it's set in the seventies. So again, just cuckoo anecdotes. Not the best situation for a young girl to be raised in. And when you think about these first books that I mentioned you're thinking, wow, if only like a social worker could have intervened or helped get them out of these horrendous situations that they were in. When the government steps in and tries to help, it actually can be more horrific. The next book is about a young girl that gets sent to an institutional facility for foundlings. This book is called The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames by Justine Cowan, and she actually wrote this about her mother. She was raised by a British mother, very upper crust, very polished, and she comes to find out after her mother's death that she did not have that aristocratic upbringing at all. She was given up by her single mother to this founding hospital in England, which is supposed to give them the best life possible. Well, that is not what happened to this woman at all. It is horrific. It makes Miss Hannigan's set up in Little Orphan Annie, it makes that look like Club Med 

KIM: Oh wow. 

AMY: This book is interesting though, because Justine Cowan, she's on a journey of figuring out why did my mother and I never get along? Why did we not have a good relationship? And the answer is because of this experience that her mother went through as a child. 

KIM: Traumatic, very traumatic experience. 

AMY: Dickensian bad. Everything they did was regimented, like the military. You had to go to the bathroom all at the same time. And it was just emotionless and cold and the whole philosophy behind the hospital was like to create these machines, basically, for Britain, to go on and be servants . So they didn't want them to have any emotional connections with people. They didn't want them to be too educated. They just didn't show them any love. Like they And as a result, all sorts of psychological stuff happened to these kids. This is a book from Virago, which I didn't realize when I first started reading it. And then I saw that Lucy Scholls had a She does the Our Shelves podcast and she had the author Justin Cowan on. So if you wanna learn more about this book and her mother's time in the founding hospital, you can listen to that podcast episode as well. But it wa it was good, but there were times when it was almost like, this is hard. This is hard to hear. What is the most heartbreaking is that the unwed mother that had given her up when World War II started, she's like, I'm in a position where I can take her again. Can I please reclaim my daughter? And they said no. She didn't have to be there. Um, so 

KIM: is a, 

AMY: there's more to the

KIM: That's like a novel that, you almost can't believe that that could be true.

AMY: Yeah. all these books feel this way to me though. That's why I think I've gotten into them you keep thinking like, That can't have happened. That can't possibly have happened to that person, but it did. I mean, of course then we have other memoirs like remember running with

KIM: Yeah, I know. I was gonna say that earlier, because that's also maybe why I haven't been as tuned into the memoirs.

AMY: Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. so it's A Secret Life of Dorothy Soames gets into a little bit the idea of how these traumatic childhoods then get passed on because you know, obviously Dorothy Soames 

KIM: Intergenerational trauma.

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. So she had a bad childhood and then she didn't know how to be a mother because she didn't have a mother. So she didn't know how to be nurturing. She was never shown an example of it. So then her own daughter, the author of the book, has her own psychological struggles and it just goes on and on. And that is reminding me of another book that I read. Um, Maud Newton's Ancestor Trouble.

KIM: wanna read that so bad. She's gonna be a guest coming

AMY: Yeah, she's gonna be a guest on the show. 

KIM: Yeah. I, I wanna read her book because I've known her forever online. I've never met her in person, but I've known her online for years. And just with all the other books we've been reading for the podcast, I haven't had a chance, but I really wanna read it. So you read it.

AMY: Yeah, it's called Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation, and it kind of ties these two ideas together. She was raised by a father that was very overbearing, racist, demanded perfection from his kids. Troubled in a lot of different ways, and so she goes back in time and it's like, why did he turn out that way? Is this a cycle that is gonna keep continuing and does that then affect me forward? A lot of the book is also looking into the science of intergenerational trauma and ancestry and all the sorts of things that will help her answer that question. So it's interesting. Um, we could get into the celebrity bent of the hard knock life memoirs as well. if you remember, like Christina Crawford's Mommy Dearest, uh, about. Joan Crawford. Yeah, I be, I believe I read that one way back when.

KIM: I think I read it to a skimmed dick quickly, but you know, I watched the movie multiple times. There's something like about just, it's fascinating, you know, fascinating to see 

AMY: there's. 

KIM: relationship.

AMY: Yeah, and it goes back to like rich, poor, famous, um, living in the wilds of Idaho. Everybody can have their version of this story. You know, there's another memoir by Roseanne Barr's daughter, Jenny Pentland, it's called, This Will Be Funny Later, and it's a all about like, what it was like to grow up being her daughter.

KIM: Oh, I bet that's interesting. I did not know about that one.

AMY: And then there's one that I just started that I keep seeing. I think it's on the bestseller list. I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy. She was a child actress. 

KIM: I've been seeing that everywhere and wondering about it. The title is very provocative. 

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: You're like, what is that about? Yeah.

AMY: It's the classic kind of crazy stage mom who got her daughter into basically being the breadwinner for the family and being kind of obsessed with it. Like Gypsy Rose Lee, another one. Um, know, same idea. There's a couple other ones that I want to read as well. Fun Home. You've heard of that one, right? You haven't because that got turned into a Broadway. 

KIM: No, I don't know this at

AMY: Okay, so this was turned into a Broadway musical.

KIM: Okay.

AMY: And fun it's short for funeral home. So it's a, she was raised, she, her dad was a funeral home director. It's part memoir and it's also part graphic novel, which I didn't realize. I didn't know that about it. But yeah, it inspired the Broadway musical of the same name, so the author is Alison Bechdel who created the Bechdel called Beck. 

KIM: the name, Alison Bechdel

AMY: The Bechdel test. Do you know what that is? She came up with the idea of a movie needs to have two main female characters. Who 

KIM: that, 

AMY: other about something other than men.yeah.You know that. So that it's this, she wrote this book. So her dad is like closeted gay in addition to being the funeral home director. But apparently I think we would like it because it features a ton of literary illusions as well. That's what I've read about it. Yeah. So that, I think that would make it interesting for us. Um, there's another one, Somebody's Daughter, uh, by Ashley C. Ford. 

KIM: Ashley Ford. Yeah. Ashley ford. I mean, Ash Ashley, I, I follow, I've followed her for years. I don't know if she's even on Twitter anymore, but I've followed her for years, so I remember her talking about that. I knew her book had come out and everything. 

AMY: Yeah, yeah. And it's like her father is incarcerated and she doesn't know why and, and it's just her trying to

KIM: Figure it out. Yep. yeah, I've been curious about that one for sure. 

AMY: And then finally, and I'm gonna, bring it full circle because there's one more that I was interested in.Um, it's called The Wild Truth by Karine McCandless. She is the sister of Chris McCandless from that book Into the Wild. He was the guy that went off in the school bus.  The John Krakauer book. Um, so she's his sister.

KIM: Oh, 

AMY: She tells about their childhood and what actually prompted Christopher McCandless to go out in the wilderness.They had a horrible childhood.She goes into more detail about why he felt the need to escape from it all so that just brings me full circle a little bit in terms of now we're back to a actual survival wilderness 

KIM: It's all coming together,

AMY: marrying my two loves here.Yeah, so listeners, I recommend all of those books that I mentioned. I don't wanna say they're entertaining. But they're just gripping. I, I guess that's the word. And if you have any other ones, any other favorites tell us some of your other hard knock life memoirs that you suggest,and I will check em out. 

KIM: Yeah, and we will list all of the books that we mentioned on our website, Lostladiesoflit.com. We'll probably be talking about it in our Facebook forum, there's a lot of fun conversation. 

AMY: Yeah, and I should mention too, like it makes me very grateful. We all felt probably that we had challenges in our childhood. Things that were hard. But when you read these, you're like, by comparison 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: was very fortunate 

KIM: Yeah, you're calling up your parents and being like, thanks, appreciate you. for sure. Yeah,

AMY: thanks for, not 

KIM: yeah, 

AMY: go live in a quonset hut

KIM: yeah. If you're listening, dad, I love you. You did come up with a lot of interesting ideas, but they weren't to this

AMY: it wasn't quite to that 

level. 

KIM: not at all. Not at all. Yeah.

AMY: Um, all right, so we'll be back next week with another lost Lady of Lit. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo is designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.