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A review by drwozniak
Becoming Shameless by Eden Simchah
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Thank you to the author for sending me the eARC of this memoir.
I’m a big fan of people putting their story out there and admire the bravery that it takes to let people into your life. This memoir was very touching and will be very relatable to anyone who has the unfortunate experience of having an abusive mother or the journey of coming out as an adult. There were two chapters in particular that I really enjoyed although they had triggering content. I appreciated the chapter where they talked about their rape and how they struggled with qualifying it as rape because it wasn’t “bad” enough. I know that was a hard-won battle to come to terms with. I also really liked the chapter where they discovered P!nk. I also enjoyed the ending chapters that were more what they learned through therapy and self discovery and their continuous journey through healing. Overall, this was a memoir that is very validating and honest.
I did find that the vignettes felt a bit disjointed at times. I feel like there was a lot of telling instead of showing. For example, we would be told that the author felt like they often annoyed people with their crying at school and people would avoid them but it would have been really useful to have scenes to support that statement. Show instead of tell and all that
I’m a big fan of people putting their story out there and admire the bravery that it takes to let people into your life. This memoir was very touching and will be very relatable to anyone who has the unfortunate experience of having an abusive mother or the journey of coming out as an adult. There were two chapters in particular that I really enjoyed although they had triggering content. I appreciated the chapter where they talked about their rape and how they struggled with qualifying it as rape because it wasn’t “bad” enough. I know that was a hard-won battle to come to terms with. I also really liked the chapter where they discovered P!nk. I also enjoyed the ending chapters that were more what they learned through therapy and self discovery and their continuous journey through healing. Overall, this was a memoir that is very validating and honest.
I did find that the vignettes felt a bit disjointed at times. I feel like there was a lot of telling instead of showing. For example, we would be told that the author felt like they often annoyed people with their crying at school and people would avoid them but it would have been really useful to have scenes to support that statement. Show instead of tell and all that