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41st out of 863 books
—
1,241 voters
Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found
by
Jennifer Lauck (Goodreads Author)
To young Jenny, the house on Mary Street was home -- the place where she was loved, a blue-sky world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even her mother's pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with powder and a kiss on the cheek. But when everything that Jenny had come to rely on begins to crumble, an odyssey of loss, loneliness, and a child's will to s...more
Paperback, 432 pages
Published
August 28th 2001
by Washington Square Press
(first published 2000)
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I am fascinated by survival stories, as a survivor myself.
I interests me to look into someone else's experience. As children we just don't always understand what is going on. Yet you do your best to survive and make sense of your life.
How someone else managed is interesting to me.
I may have arrived at the doorstep of adulthood floating on a plank...but in my case, "only God can restore the years that the locust hath eaten"! He is, and not only that, working all things for GOOD.
I interests me to look into someone else's experience. As children we just don't always understand what is going on. Yet you do your best to survive and make sense of your life.
How someone else managed is interesting to me.
I may have arrived at the doorstep of adulthood floating on a plank...but in my case, "only God can restore the years that the locust hath eaten"! He is, and not only that, working all things for GOOD.
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This is another of the many books that makes me wish goodreads offered 1/2 stars -- I'd give it a 3.5. I really liked it, but recognize that it's a classic hard-childhood tearjerker. I like Hope Edelman's (author of "Motherless Daughters") synopsis: "This is one of those rare books that captures both the innocence of the child narrator and the wisdom of the adult author...BLACKBIRD is both a tribute to the author's mother and to her own powers of survival." That said, I do think it's a powerful...more
Memoirs by women are my favorite type of book to read. This book is written from a child's perspective which takes some getting used to. That said, her writing is very good. It is a story of childhood innocence and survival. Her story reminds you of your childhood and how vulnerable a child is to the harsh realities of life. I found myself thinking about being a parent and how incredibly difficult it is to raise children right. To do your best. I believe all of the adults in Jennifer's life (the...more
Living in Reno, I picked this book up primarily because of the local connection, The author was born and partially raised in this area and I thought I'd give it a shot. The book turned out to not really be my cup of tea, though the author does a great job writing. I can't fault her writing at all.
The author---Jennifer Lauck---has a mother who is dying at the beginning of the book, a workaholic father who is often times absent, and a bit older brother who is portrayed throughout much of the book...more
The author---Jennifer Lauck---has a mother who is dying at the beginning of the book, a workaholic father who is often times absent, and a bit older brother who is portrayed throughout much of the book...more
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
Most of the time I don't read those little quotes or whatever you have to call them on the first pages of a book but this is so correct, sums everything up so beautiful. After everything that happened to her, she found somewhere the courage to carry on or was to stuburn to give up..
The begining of the book was a bit hard, when she talks about her mother in the words and thoughts of a 5-6 yo girl but then at a certain p...more
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
Most of the time I don't read those little quotes or whatever you have to call them on the first pages of a book but this is so correct, sums everything up so beautiful. After everything that happened to her, she found somewhere the courage to carry on or was to stuburn to give up..
The begining of the book was a bit hard, when she talks about her mother in the words and thoughts of a 5-6 yo girl but then at a certain p...more
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Is it wrong to review my own book? Heck no! I wrote it. Who better than me to speak about it?
What Blackbird is: a view into my own experience of childhood at a time when all I could do was be a first person, present tense witness. I wrote Blackbird from a place of longing to love and be loved as well as to speak to what I saw, lived, felt and questioned about that time. I was digging into the question of mother--as it was time in my life to become a mother. I wanted know my mother--not realizin...more
What Blackbird is: a view into my own experience of childhood at a time when all I could do was be a first person, present tense witness. I wrote Blackbird from a place of longing to love and be loved as well as to speak to what I saw, lived, felt and questioned about that time. I was digging into the question of mother--as it was time in my life to become a mother. I wanted know my mother--not realizin...more
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Unbelievable!
This book is by far the best non-fiction book I have ever read. Once I picked it up I could not put it down. Reading about this womens childhood was completly unbelievable, I can't even beggin to understand how it must have been for her growing up. This book is extremly moving and will amaze you, and make you wonder how someone's life could really have been like this. I have never cried so much from reading a book in my life. I recommened that everone read this book.
This book is by far the best non-fiction book I have ever read. Once I picked it up I could not put it down. Reading about this womens childhood was completly unbelievable, I can't even beggin to understand how it must have been for her growing up. This book is extremly moving and will amaze you, and make you wonder how someone's life could really have been like this. I have never cried so much from reading a book in my life. I recommened that everone read this book.
It took me almost 5 years to get around to this book, but I "enjoyed" (not sure that's the right word, given the depressing nature of this book) it. I appreciated that Lauck wrote the book as if she were still a child, and I think that helped her tell the story. For me, however, it made this book much more depressing because she is so totally powerless. One thing which bothered me throughout was her misuse of me/I. I know she's supposed to be a child and it may have been intentionally done, but...more
I feel bad for disliking this book because it is a memoir written from the perspective of a child. Jenny's life was sad; her mom was ill for years and died and her father remarried then he died two years later. Through all this, Jenny was a disagreeable child, she never had a moment where she was happy and she did her best to alienate everyone around her. The only people she had any time for were adults that called her princess or felt sorry for her. When her father introduces Jenny to Deb, her...more
Very interesting book--not my usual genre at all. Very well written from the point of view of the child. I loved the way she described people by noticing little details. For instance, she mentioned her mother's "stop-start eyes." I can just picture those eyes flicking all over the place because she's nervous. And she thought of people in terms of touch, voice, and other details that we all notice but don't usually articulate. This child had such a chaotic and confusing life, it seems almost unbe...more
All I really need to say about this book is wow and I can’t wait to read the sequel. This memoir is true, but it reads like the best fiction. Lauck had the kind of childhood no kid should have. By 11, both of her parents had died and she was homeless. And those were just some of her problems. But she survived and became an amazing writer. I can also testify that she’s a captivating speaker and inspiring teacher. She has a gift for putting us in a scene with the perfect details—the patch of light...more
What an outstanding story, and so well written. Jennifer's childhood was an exhausting and weary one, yet she made it.
What I love about this book is that she wrote it in her childhood voice, and also how the writing style evokes so much empathy within me. I ached and was lonely for Jennifer. I could feel Jennifer and what it was like to be her, with a sick and dying mother, the sudden tragic loss of her father, her sullen brother, her idiot step mother and step siblings.
Interesting too, that th...more
What I love about this book is that she wrote it in her childhood voice, and also how the writing style evokes so much empathy within me. I ached and was lonely for Jennifer. I could feel Jennifer and what it was like to be her, with a sick and dying mother, the sudden tragic loss of her father, her sullen brother, her idiot step mother and step siblings.
Interesting too, that th...more
Just as I thought that I'd read everything about bad childhood, there comes an amazing memoir, Blackbird, by Jennifer Lauck. It's heart-wrenching beyond words, except that she manages to tell the story of her early childhood (ages five to twelve) without melodrama. Just the facts. Just the untainted view of a child who knows only her own life, who cannot imagine a "normal" life, starting with her daily full-time caring, at age five, of her very sick mother (e.g., washing and replacing the pee-ba...more
Once I started this book I was unable to put it down. I found it horrifying and yet fascinating and real. It was very well written; realistic and not cloying. I very highly recommend it for anyone looking for a good read.
Our beloved Frank McCourt said of this book: "The unblinking look of one child at a hard world. Written gloriously & movingly."
He's right.
Our beloved Frank McCourt said of this book: "The unblinking look of one child at a hard world. Written gloriously & movingly."
He's right.
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This is a memoir of about five years in a childs life. A horrendously bad life. Losing her mother early on and her father at 10yrs old. Being left with an evil stepmother, worse than any in the fairytales we know. Her life reminds me of those plastic punching bags that are weighted down on the bottom. You keep getting punched down again and again and somehow you always bounce back up. She was like that, I don't know how it was possible for her to have the amount of resilience she did. At times i...more
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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i can't find Bye-bye Blackbird so I'm writing off the excerpt on She Writes.
Chapter 1 is posted there for all to view. The writing's good, but the device used is distressing. As a context for writing about her adoption, the writer uses nuclear bomb testing. There is a certain gratituousness about this. Are these things equivalent in any way-- no.
She speaks of the bomb being dropped of her mother's pregnancy, overly obvious segue from discussion of the mercilessly blunt names of the tested bombs...more
Chapter 1 is posted there for all to view. The writing's good, but the device used is distressing. As a context for writing about her adoption, the writer uses nuclear bomb testing. There is a certain gratituousness about this. Are these things equivalent in any way-- no.
She speaks of the bomb being dropped of her mother's pregnancy, overly obvious segue from discussion of the mercilessly blunt names of the tested bombs...more
I've been on a memoir kick lately, and this book is one of the best I've read yet. It is from the child's perspective as she encounters hardships, and this made it easy-to-read and captivating. It was easy to picture a child going through these tough times. Jennifer starts out as a 6yo caretaker to her dying mother, and from there she experiences more than a child, or anyone for that matter, ever should. Not only was Lauck's story captivating, but it was incredibly repulsive, and I kept thinking...more
This was a very touching and beautifully written memoir that will stay fresh in my heart for some time. First person present tense brought me, as the reader, into the mind and heart of this little girl. Such tragic circumstances in her life where she proved to be resilient time and time again. However, I know that much of what she experienced caused such triage it would take years for any recovery to take hold. It is really hard to take care of a sick mother and not have the liberty of being a c...more
I read this memoir as part of an independent study. The author recalls her painful childhood: mother dies when she's about six, father marries a woman who has three children of her own, and then he dies too. The stepmother is appalling: favors her own children, sends Jenny to a camp run by Scientologists (where she's molested), and eventually puts her by herself in a kind of Scientologist homeless shelter. The book is written like a novel (long conversations -- whose memory is that good?), and I...more
I liked this book - the way one can like listening to a child who tells her story with honesty and understandable confusion about how terrible adults can be. The memoir was mostly vivid story and scenes, taking us from place to place, episode to episode, but every once in a while the child narrator added smart bits of wisdom in sharp sentences that I appreciated. There were moments in the story (in particular with John the swim instructor) where the narrator shied from telling the whole story an...more
This was a beautifully written memoir looking through the eyes of a child. Not fully understanding what's happening to her family, especially her mother, Jennifer has a maturity beyond her age, yet remains a child at the same time. At age 5 and not fully aware of what is wrong with Mommy, other than she is 'ill', the level of committment and her watchful eye, Jennifer's love for her Mom is heartbreakingly real. I'll definitely be reading the follow-up to this!
From back cover:
"To young Jenny, the...more
From back cover:
"To young Jenny, the...more
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I read this book in one sitting. My friend lent it to me after we discussed Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle. It is another true accounting of a childhood gone very wrong - with the child coming out on the other end okay. The things people live through.
This book is so well written and it broke my heart. It starts from a four year old's point of view and the author really catches the point of view and language of a child. I was mesmerized by this book, even when things went from awful to worse.
I...more
This book is so well written and it broke my heart. It starts from a four year old's point of view and the author really catches the point of view and language of a child. I was mesmerized by this book, even when things went from awful to worse.
I...more
I read this book just after finishing Jeanette Walls memoir Glass House. Jennifer Lauck skillfully narrates the story in the "present tense" of her current age in the book. She has grown into a very poised, resilient woman, which is very impressive considering some her childhood experiences. I see a very solid parallel between the women both Jennifer Lauck and Jeanette Walls have become, perhaps both bolstered by love and attention, albeit imperfect, in the early years, which bolstered their res...more
Reading this certainly puts life in perspective for you. Jenny has a good family life until her mother's chronic illness makes it necessary for them to move from Carson City, NV to southern CA so she can be near specialists. Within 2 years, the unthinkable occurs, her world is completely unraveled and she is coping with it alone. It's amazing how her survival skills kick in, and despite all of the loneliness and abuse she is subjected to, she still remains a very kind sweet trusting person. I fe...more
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| writing memoirs | 3 | 23 | Oct 15, 2012 09:40am |
Jennifer Lauck is the author of four memoirs, which include the international bestsellers Blackbird,Still Waters, Show Me the Way and soon to be released Found by Seal Press. A former newspaper reporter and television producer, Jennifer now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her two children
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“I can say anything, but the things I want to say are trapped in that wide open space so I don’t say anything at all.”
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“All his genius and he’s wrong. I can stay mad forever.”
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