Tag Archives: memoir

The Monday Book – I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

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Guest review by Janelle Bailey, avid reader/ever-an-educator/lifelong learner…and also now 7th grade teacher and part-time bookseller

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

First: my personal opinion is that this is an absolutely horrible title for a book, no matter how many different angles I consider. The connotation, merely, and then its wave of suggestion, when indicating one has picked up a book with this title feels icky, most especially when one’s own mom is very much alive and one has no wish to lose her at all, let alone soon.

Beyond that opinion, this is still a difficult book to read. Think Tara Westover’s Educated in the challenge of reading about a mother who does not seem to have her children–or at least this daughter’s–best interests in mind in all she does with or for –even to–her. And yet, while it was all happening, that mom might possibly have believed she was doing a “good job.”

You may not recognize Jennette McCurdy by name at all, but the character she played on iCarly, Sam Puckett, is certainly recognizable to many. Many, many–especially young women who watched and/or their moms and others who watched with them and/or were aware–will recognize Sam. And at least as she conveys in this book, McCurdy rarely responds to people who call out to her with that identification, but does when known by her given name.

And that is because her successful career playing Sam Puckett is all tied up in why McCurdy maybe is–maybe is not–glad that her mom did die, troublingly complex as that all was, and even for her, given their difficult relationship McCurdy’s entire life. It’s truly all tragic in hindsight and from this observational perspective. McCurdy’s mom treated her much more like a “pet,” it seems, more as someone she could control and dictate a life and diet and more for, than as a daughter–a child, a human.

I’m Glad My Mom Died is a memoir.

It is sincerely hard to read. Maybe that is one of the reasons I opted to listen.

This mom of five daughters certainly considered, while reading, numbers of my own flaws and errors in parenting–and years in hindsight–as they are all now young adults. Having faced and probably daily (and for 30 years!) complex challenges of only ever wanting to be the “best” mom, wishing to raise each to be strong, independent, respectful, kind, smart, productive, sweet, thoughtful, resilient, caring, empathetic–really just successful in their own daily pursuits and lesson learning–young women…and: they are!

I also acknowledge from my own childhood into adult experiences with just one sibling, and one sister at that, that these young women of mine are very much five individuals, every single one of them. They are not, nor have ever been to me, in competition for anything with or against each other, but are each/all valuable members of a team, instead, and I have only ever wanted for each of them to be pleased and proud and “glad” that I was–am–their mom, despite my “best” not always matching their own wishes for who/how I’d be. I certainly want them–hope they!–feel differently about me than McCurdy shares she feels about hers. But moms and daughters (five…remember) are–whew–at best a living experiment; I continue to do my best each and every day, fully acknowledging and breathing deeply my own very slow discovery that I cannot be all the hoped for things for every single one of them, no matter how hard I try. I am only one me…and I continue to do my best each day. I grant them that grace: to grow and learn and gain wisdom every day, becoming always their own new selves, and I hope they grant that to me as well.

I am not sorry to have “read” this book, for learning so much more about Jennette McCurdy and how difficult the life of a tv star–and all that it entailed in her individual situation–was. And for all of the thinking I did about my own “daughtering” and “mothering/ parenting.” For McCurdy, the author, a brand new life and career are just taking off and finally with her own discretion as to how she lives it. As popular as this book is–so hopefully not solely for its title–and as long as I waited for my turn, even from the library, she is off to a very successful start. People will now truly know her name.

A Feast fit for Bibliophiles

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The last stop on loop two of the book tour was Charlotte, North Carolina, where the Women’s National Book Association held a Bibliofeast in honor of Book Month.

I didn’t know much about the place before we got here, but Helen, a friend from college, is a member of the corporate culture and explained that Charlotte ranks only behind New York City and San Francisco as the leading financial district in America. Catching up with Helen—who in the intervening 20 years has risen in her field and raised two teenagers—was grand fun; we used to tease each other mercilessly, me the journalism major bent on “uncovering truth,” she the logistics and transport businesswoman who always won arguments by pointing out I could write all the truth I wanted, but if her trucks didn’t deliver it, it affected diddly. We agreed that the Internet had changed both our professions considerably since those earnest and robust exchanges.

(Helen also generously got us a hotel room with her “points” at Hampton Suites, where a flat screen TV embedded in the bathroom mirror faced a garden tub 3 feet around. Oh, that was fun. Thanks, Helen!)

But the bulk of the night was given to the Bibliofeast; eight writers, from mystery to memoir, gathered to spend 15 minutes per table with aspiring authors and bibliophiles from the region, talking about writing in general and our books specifically, then fielding questions.

One person asked, “When did you know you were going to be an author?” and I answered, “When my agent called me.” The women laughed, but it sparked a discussion that continued at the other tables. Most of the participants were shaping books in their minds. They wanted to know what had sparked mine, and I echoed Joan Didion, that we write to organize our thoughts, to find out what we know.

And we write because it’s fun. Musicians create music, sculptures fashion substances, cooks craft food. Everybody’s got a medium. If yours is writing, you write because it’s there. I’m not kidding, and I’m not waxing eloquent. To paraphrase a whole lot of authors over the years, the best way to tell if you’re a writer is to look down and see if you’re writing. Writers write the way runners run; it happens because you protect the time, give up other things to do it, without really thinking you’re making a decision. Even if you never publish, you write when you’re thinking the same the way you drink water when you’re thirsty or call a friend when you’re lonely. You write because you need to, want to, like to; it doesn’t feel so much like a choice as a way of life.

However, you publish because you want other people to read and like what you wrote—or because you can, or because you hope for money or recognition. (Oh, honey, let me buy you a cup of coffee and let’s chat about that last bit.) That’s different than writing; for one thing, there’s a helluva lotta marketing lurking below the surface, which most of us are not innately good at.

That was the biggest common theme at the tables of the Bibliofeast, an intimate night with lovely women–to a man, we were women, with the exception of one author who looked more and more uncomfortable as the night wore on–who had a lot of thoughts but not a lot of time to get them on paper: that the urge, the internal nudge to write is the biggest signal that one should, and its own justification.

Just write it down. Get started. Have fun. Go.

Jack and Wendy will be Malaprop’s in Asheville, NC this Sunday at 3 and in The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, NC Monday at 6, if you or your friends and relations would like to come say hi. Jack brought his homemade shortbread.