Happy Birthday, David
He would have been 39 today. Hard to imagine.
Friday, June 02, 2006
About Me
-
- Name: Julia Scheeres
- Location: San Francisco, CA,
Girl who outgrew Indiana and moved to California. I work as a freelance journalist -- reviewing books for the NY Times, writing profiles of serial killers for Crime Library, etc. -- and am finishing a novel. My memoir, Jesus Land, was published in October 2005.
Previous Posts
- Original essay for Powells.com
- New Horizons in the hot seat
- Jesus Land hits NYT Bestseller list!
- Merry holidays!
- Latest book review for the Times
- Jesus Land a bestseller in the UK!
- Expose on New Horizons
- Jesus Land wins 3rd Award
- Swats abolished!
- Alumni protest at New Horizons
3 Comments:
Dear Ms. Scheeres,
I finished your book, "Jesus Land", in the wee hours this morning and it's all I can think about this morning.
Couple of serendipitous thoughts, that yesterday would have been your brother's 39th birthday. That not long ago I read Jeannette Walls' memoir about her Dickensian childhood in Appalachia with mentally ill parents who in any social worker's evaluation would have been charged with neglect, and felt the same kind of outrage reading about your father's Porsche and mother's preoccupation with Christian missions far away from her troubled home, while you kids ate Garbage Soup.
I'm the parent of three wonderful kids, two of whom are emotionally troubled teens, and I have begun doing research on residential treatment centers and therapeutic boarding schools for them. I cannot imagine sending my precious children, my babies, to a reform school, or to any place I haven't researched extensively and checked out myself.
The fact that such hellish places as Escuela Caribe (and the non-sectarian, for-profit facilities run by WWASPS, where corporal punishment and sexual abuse are rampant) can exist in this day and age makes my jaw drop. Reading about the cruelty that goes on in remote places, and in the name of God, is enough to turn you off organized religion for life.
That no one in America today will publicly stand up and challenge the Christian Right wing-nuts who want to turn America into a Christian Taliban, call them on their cruel "discipline" of children and neglect of the vulnerable (like the young mother in Florida who died two days after a homebirth attended by her unlicensed mother-in-law and sister-in-law as midwives, who bled to death because they delayed calling for medical help in an obvious medical emergency while they "prayed" about it) as the actions of depraved indifference or mental illness.
I'm glad you wrote this memoir and glad I found it in my local library here in Connecticut. I'm glad you shared your story with the world and memorialized your brother, David. He mattered a lot to you, and now he does to me and to anyone who has the chance to know about his short time on earth.
best regards,
Ellen Rozsa
Julia:
I, too, just finished your book. Just now. Of course, it is only near the end of the book that I discovered that David dies and that his birthday happens to have been just 3 days ago.
This book speaks to me in so many ways. As a matter of fact, this story has broken my heart. Many times. And I rarely cry. Thank you for sharing your and David's story. I definitely understand your need to do so.
I was reared on a small farm one hour east of Birmingham, Alabama and was forced to go to Christian schools and Christian camps by parents who should never have ever conceived. When I finally got away from home to enter college, I barely had an education. No. Christian schooling and my parents taught me everything about absolute power, racism, sexism, and authority, but not much else that can be construed as moderately useful, or even true.
Again, thank you.
I'm not a "nark" either.
-Scott DeMerris
Dear Julia,
Today is November 3rd 2006. I just finished your book this morning and decided to look you up on the internet and found this page. It doesn't seem like you are still updating your blog since the last post was in June. But I just had to write to say that I can't remember ever feeling such emotion from reading a book. There were so many times I wanted to reach into the pages and pull David out and give him a big hug. To tell him he was a great kid. Your writing is so powerful, and I thank you for writing this memoir.
I also experienced fanatical religious education in my childhood in the late 1970's. Luckily it didn't last long when my mother found out what had been going on behind closed doors (I was always too embarassed or scared to tell her). Hopefully your book will continue opening the doors of these "schools" and exposing their hypocrisy.
I have two sisters who I am thankfully close to - and I will be passing your book along to them along with a big hug and "I love you".
Thank you Julia.
Bob Armstrong
Wilmington, DE
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