Becoming Anna [Hardcover]

Anna J. Michener (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1998

Becoming Anna is the poignant memoir of the first sixteen years in the life of Anna Michener, a young woman who fought a painful battle against her abusive family. Labeled "crazy girl" for much of her childhood, Anna suffered physical and emotional damage at the hands of the adults who were supposed to love and protect her. Committed to various mental institutions by her family, at sixteen Anna was finally able to escape her chaotic home life and enter a foster home. As an effort toward recovery and self-affirmation as well as a powerful plea on behalf of other abused children, Anna wrote this memoir while the experience was fresh and the emotions were still raw and unhealed. Her story is a powerful tale of survival.

"A teen's raw, in-your-face chronicle of events almost as they were happening. As such, it's unforgettable. . . . Michener's story gives voice to the thousands of children and adolescents trapped in 'the system,' biding their time until their 18th birthdays. A candid and unstinting tell-all."—Kirkus Reviews

"Extraordinary. . . . Michener's expressive writing does justice to a topic that is clearly very disturbing to her personally and communicates a profoundly important message on behalf of all abused and neglected children."—Booklist

"An important book, painful to read, but essential if other children in similar situations are to be saved."—Library Journal

"An innocent child's account of 16 years in hell and of the terrible wrongs inflicted on children who are without rights or caring advocates."—Choice

"[Michener] emerges as a compelling and courageous advocate for children and their welfare—she's a young writer with an extraordinary voice."Feminist Bookstore News

"Quite simply one of the best, most compelling, well-written autobiographies published in years. . . . Remember the name. We have not heard the last of Anna Michener."—Myree Whitfield, Melbourne Herald-Sun, cover story

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Institutionalized at 15 by her abusive parents, the author, then known as "Tiffany," was abused for several months by the staff of mental hospitals. Her state-sanctioned treatment consisted of overmedication, physical and emotional intimidation, illegal incarceration and painful criticism from teachers and psychiatric counselors. At the end of that year, when she was surrendered by her mother and taken in by foster parents, Tiffany became Anna. Were this a novel, sympathy for the overwriting, self-sanctifying, pathetic narrator would run awfully thin. Other, tougher kids called her "Crazy Girl," she recalls, "In a world that had never been anything but oppressive and cruel to any of us, they thought it was crazy for me to still have some innocence, some passion, some caring for other people, and some hope for a better world. They called me crazy with affection. They wanted me to stay that way." Michener might convince readers that she is not crazy, but it's hard to accept her rosy perception of herself and the demonization of nearly every authority?and parental?figure. Her vague and predictable descriptions of the mental institutions reveal less than a few minutes with One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest: the "clients" are generally good, misunderstood; the staff, for the most part, are bad, bitter, soulless sadists. When Michener describes her preinstitutional diaries as "a rather disorganized mix of fact and fiction, and hardly anything was finished before the next page was talking about something new," she could almost be summing up the autobiography. Professional psychologists get paid to listen to desperately anxious remembrances and imaginings, but readers don't.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In 16-year-old Michener's extraordinary memoir, written shortly after she assumed a new identity and new name, she recounts a childhood of physical and emotional abuse, first at the hands of her family, then at two facilities (one private, one state run) in which she was institutionalized for much of her adolescence. With wisdom beyond her years, this young author relates her early instinctive knowledge that "crazy" is a label applied to perfectly sane children whose behavior is a normal reaction to horrible conditions, a label used by uncaring and abusive family members to obscure the reality of mistreatment, and one which "experts" and facility staff members are all too willing to apply. With heartbreaking acuity, she describes the oppressive control imposed by institutions through the use of drugs, discipline, and monitoring--control that can break a person's spirit and bring about mental and emotional collapse. Michener's expressive writing does justice to a topic that is clearly very disturbing to her personally and communicates a profoundly important message on behalf of all abused and neglected children. Grace Fill

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (September 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226524019
• ISBN-13: 978-0226524016
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,656,212 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comments on Becoming Anna, January 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Becoming Anna (Paperback)

I am writing to provide some background for the readers of the above
book, since I feel that I can clarify some matters about which some
have been curious. My wife and I are the old couple mentioned in the
epilogue of Anna's book, with whom she has lived on and off for
several years. Some readers have questioned whether a 16-year-old
could write so perceptive an account, implying that she was helped by
others. Soon after she came to our house, she sat down at the
computer and started writing. At first we did not know what she was
writing, although soon she said she was writing the story of her life.
She told us a lot about her past, probably everything in her book, but
the written product we did not see. Rarely, when was pleased with
something she had written, she would read a few pages to us, but we
did not have a chance to read the whole thing until it was being
submitted to the press. She worked nearly every day, sometimes for
long hours, and was very proud of having finished before her l7th
birthday, but then it was 500 typewritten pages long. In the
following year, still without accepting advice from us, she cut it
down to 250 pages. Early in her stay with us, of course we wondered
about her stories and the accuracy of her recollections. We got a
copy of the records from the institution where she spent about a year.
We found no inconsistancies; she tells the truth. Nothing bad was said
about her in the records except by way of her mother's accounts. Some
have wondered how she could remember accurately all the things that
she reports. Of course she may misinterpret as much as anyone else,
but we early learned that she has a remarkable memory for
conversations and emotions. She would give us an account of some
episode, and then months later expect that we remembered the details,
and she knew exactly what she had told us (it all sounded familiar
when she had to repeat it). I am sure that every episode that she
describes is correct as she understood it, and I have a lot of
confidence that her interpretations are accurate. ...

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Raw, poignant emotion, November 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Becoming Anna (Hardcover)

This is a very painful but important book, and an accurate depiction of the world as it is perceived by children and adolescents. All who work with young people should read this book: teachers, librarians and mental health professionals. I hope that more young people will write about the lives of quiet desperation that they are leading in this country and around the world. I do not care to judge whether this book is the product of a distorted perception of a mentally ill child. Whether Anna was truly mentally ill or not, her words and her pain echoed my own childhood. When children suffer, they may have a tendency to distort what they are perceiving in the world around them, and they may exagerate what they see and experience, but there is no doubt that strange and bizarre and sick things do occur in their lives. The words in this book are written by a child in pain, a child who has no doubt suffered. She should not be judged as to the accuracy of her accounts of her own pain. It is so obviously real. Even if Anna did have a loving home and a loving family, no child in this world is immune to the the sick things that do occur. It is enough to drive anyone to the point that Anna was driven to and that she so poignantly describes in this book. I applaud Anna for her insights into the injustices that children suffer every day. It is a wonder that all children don't go insane.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thumbs up!, July 8, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Becoming Anna (Paperback)

I am so glad that I found and read this book before reading the negative reviews here. It is a wonderfully written book--it really surprised me to be reading something so well-written on the topic, in fact. This book is a rare gem in it's willingness to stand up to the system while being quite eloquent.

I may be accused of "siding" here, but I feel there are perfectly good reasons for it. I too have pretended I was crazy to escape living with my mother and had my life engulfed by trying to make it to my eighteenth birthday in a home that didn't treat me like a human being. I personally related to many of Anna's descriptions of her frustrations. Many people do not want to acknowledge what really happens behind closed doors, the cycles that repeat themselves over and over again. The disbelieving reactions of readers, criticizing her for her attitude, enforce the culture that believed Anna's mother and trapped her in mental institutions. And to these reviewers, the reason doing laundry in the basement is a big deal is because her dad lived in the basement and repeatedly beat her in that spot. It would not have been feasible for Anna to write a book full of apologies to her readers, so she offers a succinct one for interpreting the tone of the book, noting that if she is going overboard in anger, it is for lack of what she could feel going through it. And such a story is so complicated that I think she handles the issue very well.

If you haven't read this book, please don't listen to the harsh reviews calling Anna's vantage point into question. Yes, it's a harsh and infuriating topic. But she's done a marvelous job telling her story, and it's one of the best-told such stories you'll find.