Customer Reviews

Off Kilter: A Woman's Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother, and Her Polish Heritage

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I loved this energetic, thoughtful, courageous book about the ways we can be thrown off-balance by life's many challenges. What I admire about Linda Wisniewski's memoir is the way she uses all her experiences, no matter how painful, to bring herself back into balance--and help to show the rest of us how we, too, can find a way through pain.

Scoliosis was the least of her problems. "Off Kilter: A Woman's Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother, & Her Polish Heritage" is the story of a woman's truly American life. She must deal with an abusive father, an apathetic mother, and the rigid stiffness of the Catholic Church. Only when she accepts her affliction, her family, and her heritage does she find a life she can live with it all in this compelling memoir. "Off Kilter: A Woman's Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother, & Her Polish Heritage" is highly recommended for community library memoir collections.

In Off Kilter the reader is given an insightful look at the author's life growing up in a working class Polish neighborhood in upstate New York. Linda Wisniewski has the courage to examine a difficult childhood in her beautifully written memoir. In the process she comes to terms with her past and is liberated from years of torment and anger. This thoughtful book gives meaning to the words of Socrates, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Bravo!

I thought this memoir was a heart-felt journey from despair to empowerment and hope. Linda Wisniewski critically examines her past and makes peace with it. The book is engagingly written and powerful.

I connected with Linda's story and her struggle to grow into an independent woman. It brought out long dormant memories and I enjoyed the emotional ride. I cried, cheered her on, and I was inspired by her ability to find her own path. Congratulations!

I don't recall reading another memoir that managed to convey a strong sense of personal involvement with the content with such compassion and understanding. She continually reminds readers that although she feels sadness about her mother's life, and realizes that many of the obstacles she faced as a result of her mother's view of life, she realizes that there was no malice, and that her mother, larger family, culture and church "did the best they knew how to do." In a memoir reading group I belong to, I often hear comments like "the author seemed disconnected from the content, as if she were writing about someone else's experience." I felt like I was inside Linda's head.

As I read this book, I had a sense of a rich, dense stew -- it had a sort of organic feel with the underlying theme of gradual enlightenment as a base, and flashes of insight were revealed in little chunks (like life happens) rather than force fit into a chronological flow or topical packets. Each chapter had a nice mix of chunks. Although a few story elements were repeated, they were reshaped to fit the new context, not just pasted in, and the repetition added to the realistic feel. In our minds we tend to replay certain tapes more than others and recall them in varying contexts.

I especially liked the strong conclusion: I'm done now. The scabs are gone. I'm ready to move on. I found this a moving example of how one woman has used writing to effect personal healing and closure.

The author delves into the legacy she inherited; the legacy that formed both her character and her crooked spine. She speaks in honest and brave terms about how her family's history and American immigrant experiences affected her childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Interspersed throughout her story are fascinating and important tidbits about Polish history, lore, and tradition.

Among the broad spectrum of memoirs written about the American immigrant experience, Off Kilter has earned its rightful place.

A book I highly recommend.

I began reading the day it arrived. I continued reading it in every spare moment (and also put off a few other things so I could keep reading) and finished the book within 24 hours. Off Kilter was so compelling that I just had to keep reading it!
Linda did an amazing job of weaving her own healing journey, her cultural background, regional history and her family dynamics into a story that resonated very strongly with me. She believes, as I do, that we carry alot from our families, our home territory and our ancestral line and the only way to make peace with the difficult parts is to revisit the scene and work with what we find.

Thank you, Linda for a wonderful, compassionate meditation on growing, healing and making peace with our pasts.

I thought about abuse, escape, memoir and healing as I read Linda Wisniewski's beautifully written memoir, which deserves to be compared to Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, although she describes emotional rather than physical starvation and emotional chill rather than the literal fear of freezing to death that McCourt endured. The author's curved spine became a visible manifestation of a childhood where she could only silently absorb the verbal abuse of a hostile father and the criticism of her distant, self-effacing mother. Wisniewski felt devalued long before the scoliosis diagnosis at 13 classified her as damaged and unworthy.
Her memoir uses evocative details to transport the reader to the pleasures of playing on sidewalks in the 1950s upstate New York neighborhood where she grew up. Her family's Polish, Catholic culture encouraged embracing, even inviting pain and suffering. I couldn't help but think that her experience must have been more difficult to transcend because the abuse was internalized. That she managed to find her way ot of the maze and build self-esteem and accomplish things her mother could never have dreamed of offers hope to others caught in webs of negative memories.

This book was so compelling that I stayed up way too late reading it all at once! (It was worth it.) I came out of it with such respect for Linda's strength and vision. Things in her life have been off-kilter at times, but she's been able to recognize that and stay true to what's right. That is some power.

I'm looking forward to more writing from Linda!