Customer Reviews

Change Me into Zeus's Daughter: A Memoir

5 star:		(51)
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3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
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and I found the book to be a moving and entertaining memoir. I am sure it will become a bestseller. However; this story does not belong to Barbara alone. It also belongs to her Mother and her seven siblings. I know this because I am the author's sister. When I first learned Barbara was going to write this book I was very uneasy. I had put this life in the past and did not want to re-live it. It was very painful and humiliating. When I received my copy I knew then that I would read it. The book got thrown against the wall many times, once my wonderful husband even took the book away from me because it brought back so many painful memories, some in the book, most that are not, many I had forgotten and did not ever want to remember again. But it also served to remind me of what a special person my mother was. This story is about the determination of one woman who watched all her dreams shatter but remained strong in an era which did not recognize alcoholism as a disease or child abuse as a problem. She was my rock, my best friend and the one person who kept me sane through the madness when I was not even sure I deserved to have a place on this earth. I am sure she is in a special place in heaven where she can forever sing the beautiful music she loved so much because she has already lived through hell on earth. I miss her every day of my life. I cannot speak for my brothers and sisters, but I know that each and every one of us earned the right to be called "survivor". I consider myself to have had two lives, the one I lived before the day my father put that gun to his head and pulled the trigger and the one that started the same day. Because for me that was the day the abuse ended. I was 38 years old. This book is destined to be a bestseller and I am very proud of my sister. I also hope this book will help to make people understand that alcoholism and child abuse are serious problems that exist in every race, society, income bracket and if you know of someone who needs help, don't just talk about, call someone.

Love you Barbara

This wonderful book has so many surprises. First among them is the undaunted spirit and strength of a girl who suffers through a hellish childhood and can write beautifully about it without wallowing in regret and elegiac gloom. The humor and apparent lack of bitterness is truly amazing as Ms. Moss relates the horror of an abusive alcoholic father, a numbed but loving mother, and the suffocating poverty of her rural South. This is not a depressive book. And there is no request or undertone for pity.

Simply put, this is a must read for those who were moved by Angela's Ashes or similar books. This is America. This is a woman. This is a disadvantaged girl who perservered. To have written this book without a sense of loss or regret is an astonishing feat.

The writing is clear and uncomfortably descriptive. You will feel her hunger, pain, fear and shame. And you will learn her incredible ability to cope and triumph.

This is a wonderful book.

Writing at its best, is lived rather than read. Occasionally we have the privilege to be drawn into someone's experiences with such power and clarity that we are possessed by their history and translated into it. Barbara Moss' story makes us members of the family as she weaves gripping tales of poverty, alcoholism, sickness and neglect into a book that you can't stop reading. As difficult as the circumstances are, the story is never without hope. The characters are in many ways ordinary and flawed and in spite of that, are amazingly appealing, interesting, funny, and often heroic as they struggle with the situations that compose their existence. In her writing she is able to depict seemingly ordinary events, turning them into the human essences that touch our deepest emotional levels, where we live and laugh and cry and love.

A brilliant depiction of alcoholism, codependence, living with facial disfigurement and grinding poverty for a white Alabama family. Within the squalor, terror, and degradation burn powerful flames of erudition, dignity, and love. This book is astonishingly devoid of self-pity.

This book, both informative and poignant, is one that I plan to recommend to students in anthropology, education, sociology and to instructors of courses dealing with issues affecting modern family life in America. With her frank, straightforward writing style, the author causes every reader to realize that not all American children have access to the American Dream. This book makes one recognize that it is time for each American to get involved in correcting inequality in the U.S. during the next millenium.

This book is being compared to 'Angela's Ashes' in every review I've seen, and with good reason. Barbara's father shared numerous traits with Frank McCourt's, and the hardships, poverty and many other difficulties faced by both families were somewhat similar. So many sad, crazy, incredible and unbelievable things happen to this family, though - it's one of those 'truth is stranger than fiction' things. If you'd seen a Hollywood movie (and there may very well be one eventually) about this family, you'd say 'yeah, right, all of that couldn't actually happen to a family in real life'. But it did, and their story is amazing, mostly in the sense that it appears that most of the children turned out OK. Much credit is given to their remarkable mother's spirit, teaching the children about art, poetry, theatre and music despite the enormous gulf between such things and this family's daily existence. But I think the kids themselves leaned on each other, and drew from a tough inner strength. Read this book! I admire Barbara Robinette Moss and her entire family.

*****
This book is the most beautiful memoir I've ever read and the one of the most memorable books I've ever read in my life. It is about the author's childhood in Alabama, about poverty, abuse, and alcoholism, but even more it is about love, family, and what is "normal". Despite the dark subject it is not a depressing book, but rather, a book of hope and love. I cannot imagine anyone having had a more troubled or abusive childhood than did the author, but the central theme of family love is what, most affects the family members and holds them together above all.

When you finish the book, you are really sorry, as you hate to see it end. Fortunately it continues with a second memoir about the author's life as an adult called "Fierce". Both are worth purchasing in hardback and rereading throughout your life; they are not books to be read once and then donated to a book sale.

It is not simply well-written, but it is so moving, honest, and matter-of-fact, that you really feel like you know and love all of the real people in the author's life. When I read "Alice"'s review (see above...Alice is the author's sister) I was so moved because I feel like I "know" her from the memoir. Of course I don't, but the memoir was that real.

I read this book as slowly as I could to make it last. It was just so good. I can't imagine anyone buying it and thinking they didn't get more than their money's worth, as it delivers on all levels---style of writing, suspense and plot, authenticity and transparency, the ability to draw you into the author's world.

"Fierce" takes place mostly after the author is an adult and leaves home although there are many flashbacks to childhood. "Change Me Into Zeus' Daughter" is about the author's childhood. I would buy both books together in hardback and save them forever to be read again and again.

*****

A year ago, I was fortunate to read Barbara Robinette Moss' essay which became the first chapter of this book. At the time, I was in awe of her skill with words, her imagery, her mastery of storytelling and touched deep within at the poignacy of the tale she had to tell. I was overjoyed when I learned this had become a book, and purchased it in it's first few days of publication.

An avid reader, and a writer myself, I cannot recall being so moved or so enthralled with any recent 'memoir'. Moss reaches inside the reader and grabs ahold while she carries us gently through a journey of poverty, loss, grief and joy.

Yet, it is less a story of the author than it is a story of woman-ness: her's, her mother's, her sisters' and the courage, grace and poise these women maintain in the midst of, and against a backdrop of, oppression, fear, humiliation. It is a story of triumph and a story of elegance.

Would that we all could be the women of this book, regardless of circumstance.

Moss writes prose like poetry, with clarity and beauty. A must read. A phenomenal story. An empowering tale which proves the maxim: good books and good art serve to teach us all, that everything is possible!

Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter by Barbara Robinette Moss

I loved this book. It seems impossible that children who spent their days memorizing poetry and reading books on classic art also lived with poverty, violence, malnutrition, and humiliation. How could someone survive such a childhood and still write such a hopeful book?

The book is set during the late 1950s and 60s in Alabama in the towns of Eastaboga, Anniston, Birmingham and Kimberly. The book tells why Ms. Moss sought a life of art and beauty.

Her father was an alcoholic, too proud to accept charity, too violent to stay out of trouble, and too charming not to control his children's hearts. Ironically, it was he who told his children one night about Venus, the daughter of Zeus. Pointing to the star, he told them she was cherished and beautiful. Venus was "a star that encompassed everything I had been praying for. I closed my eyes and made a wish: Change me into Zeus's daughter."

Ms. Moss's mother provided an escape from the ugliness of their lives. She focused her children's attention on the liberal arts since she was an educated woman whose only fault was submissive compliance, not only to her husband, but to life's traumas.

Many chapters tell of the antics of Ms. Moss's siblings. Her stories are strictly Southern with descriptions of bright lilies, blue foothills and red clay. Describing a field of gladiolas, she says "...the slender stalks had soaked up energy from the sun all day, we could hear them grow, jubilantly crackling as they pushed toward the stars. Solar furnaces. Cosmic rockets."

When she's older, Ms. Moss suffers from perceived ugliness due to several moles and a severe overbite. Ridiculed by classmates, she saved money to have the moles removed. She also worked to pay for braces on her teeth and underwent facial surgery at the University of Alabama Hospital at Birmingham. Further, she worked to finish college, raised a son and is now an accomplished artist of oil painting and multi-media art, according to several magazine articles I've read about her life.

The book's dust jacket reflects the two-edged story. On the front is a photo of the children and their mother sitting on the steps of a ramshackle house. On the back is a painting of a pretty, delicate face -- Ms. Moss's self-portrait in yellows and reds. She is more like Venus, not only in beauty, but also in the transforming power of her starry goddess.

This book took my breath away. Was it the deep honesty? Was it the triumphs, sometimes so small but critical, in the face of such tragedy? Was it the nostaglia I experienced since the author lived through the same era I did- not the poverty but the wickedness of alcoholism, rawness of the Civil Rights battle, collecting of deposit soda bottles for a little extra change? Was it the strength of character, the juxtaposition of the cruelty and generosity of people? I imagine it is all of this and the lyrical writing. The book was so powerful when I read the last page I was drawn to reread other sections again.

This book is an important witness to the destructiveness of family secrets and the hope for people demanding change for themselves and their families.