Glühbirne
06-29-2008, 09:20 PM
It's an autbiography of a girl who grew up in a polygamist Mormon sect in Utah. It really gives you a window into how the people in that community live and how this particular women viewed it when she was growing up.
She starts with her youngest years growing up in a polygamous family. Her dad had three wives and she says there was always tension, jealousy, and arguing between the wives and thier respective children. She talks a lot in the beginning about how her mother was the one treated the worst, and I'm sure she's not being really objective in that aspect, but overall she really tries.
I like how she tries to be fair in her representations of what happened during her life. She always makes it clear that no matter what, she still loves all of the people in the sect that she broke away from and she understands thier beliefs and how they are manipulated by a few men in charge of the whole community.
She tries to let you understand why the things happen in that group happen, without justifying or demonizing the people. She's even relatively fair in her portrayal of her ex-husband who raped her, showing that he was a sort of a victim himself, just doing what he had been brainwashed to believe in since childhood.
It's amazing when you realize that all of this happened here in the USA in the 21st century. It's even more stunning to learn that in that community, even the police are part of the sect and they take orders from the men in charge. You see that there really is no way for a young person to leave if they want to. With no money and nowhere to go for help, they are trapped. Everyone in the town and surrounding area is part of the same group, so there's often nobody from them to reach out to, and even if there was, they've been taught from birth not to trust outsiders, and it's hard to shake those fears. Everything is owned by the church and the community is almost communal in many ways, so when they do manage to leave, it's really hard to adjust to regular society because they don't know about credit and paying rent, etc.
She starts with her youngest years growing up in a polygamous family. Her dad had three wives and she says there was always tension, jealousy, and arguing between the wives and thier respective children. She talks a lot in the beginning about how her mother was the one treated the worst, and I'm sure she's not being really objective in that aspect, but overall she really tries.
I like how she tries to be fair in her representations of what happened during her life. She always makes it clear that no matter what, she still loves all of the people in the sect that she broke away from and she understands thier beliefs and how they are manipulated by a few men in charge of the whole community.
She tries to let you understand why the things happen in that group happen, without justifying or demonizing the people. She's even relatively fair in her portrayal of her ex-husband who raped her, showing that he was a sort of a victim himself, just doing what he had been brainwashed to believe in since childhood.
It's amazing when you realize that all of this happened here in the USA in the 21st century. It's even more stunning to learn that in that community, even the police are part of the sect and they take orders from the men in charge. You see that there really is no way for a young person to leave if they want to. With no money and nowhere to go for help, they are trapped. Everyone in the town and surrounding area is part of the same group, so there's often nobody from them to reach out to, and even if there was, they've been taught from birth not to trust outsiders, and it's hard to shake those fears. Everything is owned by the church and the community is almost communal in many ways, so when they do manage to leave, it's really hard to adjust to regular society because they don't know about credit and paying rent, etc.