REVIEW: I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

 

So Jennette McCurdy looked vaguely familiar to me and then I realized that it was because she was on iCarly and then Sam and Cat with Ariana Grande.  She had dropped off the face of the acting earth after those shows.  I had never really wondered why, honestly, but then this book started generating a lot of buzz.  There was a LONG waitlist for it at my library but I finally got my grubby hands on a copy and here we are.

I'm normally pretty hesitant to read a celebrity memoir but this one has been generating some buzz and I'm honestly glad that I read it.  It deals head on with the abusive relationship that Jennette had with her mother, Debra McCurdy and her coming to terms with her mother's death from cancer. We learn early on that Jennette grew up in a poor Mormon family in California and Debra forced Jennette into acting at the age of 6 in a painfully obvious play to live out her own failed ambitions through her youngest child - Jennette had two older brothers. Jennette felt that she had to keep her acting career up even though she didn't want to because that was, essentially, the only way to protect herself from her mother's abusive and sometimes neglectful behavior. 

The abuse that McCurdy suffered at the hands of her mother spilled over into other areas - notably her relationship with food and alcohol. McCurdy suffered from a number of different eating disorders throughout her life. Initially, she was anorexic, severely limiting her food intake to prevent the onsent of puberty (thereby enabling her to be cast in several roles where she was playing children that were younger in age than her). In fact, McCurdy did not get her first period until she was 16. Eventually, McCurdy would struggle with binge eating and bulimia. 

Most horrifically, McCurdy's mother would supervise her in the bathroom until she was 17, giving her vaginal and breast exams, causing her to feel so violated and yet unable to advocate for herself or tell someone about this. 

What I loved about this book is that McCurdy doesn't tell her story in a way that begs for pity or attention or to be treated as a victim. It's as if writing this book was a way for her to face the demons that she had and get them out of the dark - this was her therapy. She was very matter of fact about all the things that had happened to her at the hands of her mother and in relation to her mother. It's as if we're watching Ms. McCurdy grapple with what happened to her in real time and it's really, really good. It's also a story of redemption after many failed attempts - I felt that she was *real* in the sense that she described how she failed to deal with her issues in therapy initially but eventually went through a lot of hard work to get where she is now.  

Please do not read this book if you will get triggered by eating disorders, abuse or alcoholism or any of the things.  McCurdy is brutally candid about these things and it could cause some backsliding. That being said, it's a really good memoir of the celebrity kind!