A devastatingly triumphant story that will be a beacon for many women who suffer in silence.
A compelling, often disturbing account of one woman’s life in Christian fundamentalism.
After moving from Michigan to Florida, Levings’ mother thought joining a church might help the family acclimate to their new surroundings. The author, then a budding adolescent, was leery of the Baptist megachurch but eventually acquiesced. From there, the author progressed through youth group, summer camp, and a Christian school run by a Billy Graham–type figure. These influences provided a steady, unified stream of fundamentalist doctrine that led the author to blow past numerous red flags and marry her abusive boyfriend at age 19. Believing that his behavior was partly caused by her not being submissive enough, she tried to appease him by yielding more fully to his demands. Instead, it further fueled his tyrannical view of biblical patriarchy. When Levings failed to meet his expectations, he spanked her with a belt and mandated sex as a necessary part of the discipline process. “He wanted me to call him ‘my lord,’” she writes. “Wear only dresses. Cover my head with a scarf to show submission and modesty.” Meanwhile, she writes, he “turned to the men’s forums where husbands could get advice on how to make their wives cooperate.” Eventually, Levings discovered a virtual community of liberal-leaning, art-loving Christian women who, among others, provided a safety net when her marriage came to a cataclysmic head. The author pulls no punches in recounting nearly 15 years of oppression and abuse, painting a visceral portrait of her then-monochromatic world with bold strokes of linguistic color and sensory detail. This book stands out among other narratives about overcoming religious trauma in that it peels back the layers of Christian fundamentalism, exposing why it’s so attractive to people hungry for assurance and certainty.
A devastatingly triumphant story that will be a beacon for many women who suffer in silence.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250288288
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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