Customer Reviews

Becoming Anna

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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. ...

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.

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.

Anna J. Michener has written one of the few honest, complete autiobiographies with relation to the subject of child abuse; not only by her parents but at the hands of an unsympathetic, emotionally blind society. This account is of overwhelming social importance; America right now is one of the many, many countries in the world that has not made any steps to ensure that children share equal and full protections under law as their 'adult' counterparts.

I found the scene when she had just arrived at the detestable 'juvenile hospital' and spent days floating in front of the windows, allowing the light to stream in-between her fingers to be aesthetically spellbinding. The ensuing prose shows us the outlines of a highly intellegent, creative mind that was so poorly appreciated by the people she had been dependant upon. Reading this book left a strong impression in my mind; I escaped the fate of being 'sent away' to a virtual concentration camp like the one described in my teen years, but know many that haven't.

As an abused child, it has taken a great deal for me to come to terms with the fact that what was done to me; and all of the cruelty, violence, and humiliation acted upon the youth of the entire world was indeed wrong, undeserved, and is worthy of being fought against. I hope that this book can impress readers upon those lines; that people won't just say "oh, I can't beleive that actually happens to people," and then go on with their lives when the fact is that this is happening all around them, they've just been taught not to recognize it for what it is. The blindness and cruelty that allowed the horrors which Anna J. Michener experienced need to be exposed; to be spoken of in order for these problems to be fixed.

Of course people don't believe Anna. Nobody wants to believe that this stuff can happen.

But it does.

Anna's story helped me to write my story down, and i'm sure it's helped alot of people in the same situation.

She told the horrible, Ugly truth, that nobody wants to believe. She made a difference in this world by writing a wonderful book. THe ending wasn't weak, the ending showed her transtion from Tiffany to Anna, the amount of courage shown in this book was amazing. Anna J Michner is a name we will be seeing years from now.

This is a powerful and emotionally draining book. Sadly, the conditions Anna describes in her book are far from unique. Poorly trained and poorly paid workers in state mental facilities end up harming patients more than healing them. This book should be required reading for social workers, psychologists, and others in the mental health field.

i found 'becoming anna' a non-stop read from the moment i picked it up. written between her 16th and 17th birthdays, the main content of her book details her time in two mental insititutions. the horror of what actually happens (she was in them in the early 90's) is hard reading. what she experienced, the failures of the mental health system and how children are treated is heart-breaking. in her epilogue she comments on her relief of finally being 18 as suddenly she had 'rights'. before she had no recourse to rebel against her (wrongful) incarceration, the instituions listen to who pays the bills-not who has to endure it. the falsity and cruelty of the staff at these places and the own terror of her abusive, neglectful family make it strong reading.

i found this to be a beautifully written book for someone so young, detailing the pain of her short life.

This book is excellent and even though the author wrote it from a understandibly bitter view...you get both sides of the story.This was a beautiful moving book. It made me cry and cry.

A review by Rod Ghearing of House of Fire: The Autobiographyof a Sixteen Year Old, by Anna J. Michener.

How could a sixteenyear old possibly have enough life experiences to write an autobiography? Until you read Anna Michener's story you cannot possibly imagine.

[...] It is difficult to describe my reaction to this book as I read it since it varied so much. First, I was appalled at the extent to which her families' cruelties to her could go, especially in her younger years. I wondered how she survived. Second, I could not understand how the "mental health system" in her state (not that it's different from any other state's) could have failed this young person so miserably. Her often repeated point that children have very few rights as compared to adults in this system is only too true. I find that I want to apologize to Anna for what the system we've devised and what our refusal to "get involved" has caused her to endure.

I wholeheartedly encourage you to read this unbelievable account of her life at the hands of her family and our so-called mental heath system. Her story of courage and determination to survive while the whole world seemed to be working against her is both heart warming and heart breaking.

Read her story. You will not be disappointed.

This was a wonderfully well-written book about a terrible subject: the abuse of a young girl at the hands of psychiatrists both in and out of mental institutions. Anna, or Tiffany as she is first called before she changed her name, is not a bad child, but that doesn't matter to anyone: her psychologist grandmother has labelled her "evil" and her ridiculous parents believe it! Tiffany is dragged from one money-grubbing, inept shrink who follows the family's "party line" that she is "bad" or "sick" to another and is labelled all sorts of ridiculous things as the shrinks try to find obnoxious theories to graft onto her. All the while the shrinks are being paid by Tiffany's parents, who do not have her well-being at heart, and are trying to please her parents (and keep the money flowing in) more than they are interested in assisting Tiffany. This is an astonishing book not only because it recounts what was done to poor Tiffany in the name of "psychology" as practiced by idiots but because she lived through it, told the tale, and went on to write it down, thus blowing the whistle on her tormentors. Bravo, Tiffany/Anna! You did a great service to humanity by exposing what was done to you in this book. I hope you have as much good fortune in your own life as you have tried to create for other people by blowing the liff off what was done to you. I also hope the psychological "professionals" out there who find this story have the guts to read it, face themselves and learn from it.