Christina Crawford - Survivor

31. Survivor by Christina Crawford (1988)
Length: 268 pages
Genre: Non-Fiction
Started: 13 April 2012
Finished: 15 April 2012
Where did it come from? From a Library Book Sale
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 1 April 2009
Why do I have it? I like autobiographies and I had also read Mommie Dearest several years ago and wanted to read the sequel.

In this sequel to the ground-breaking and shocking Mommie Dearest, Christina Crawford dissects her first book and the public outcry that it caused; the subsequent movie adaptation of that book; her debilitating stroke and struggle for recovery and the breakup of her marriage. Mommie Dearest was the first celebrity "tell-all" book, and garnered quite a lot of attention - both positive and negative - for Christina Crawford.

I have to say that while I truly admire Christina's fervor to bring to light the until that time unspoken horror of child abuse, I found her sequel to be somewhat self-obsessed and too wrapped up in placing blame for all her present problems at her mother's feet. I understand that many adult child abuse survivors must overcome many obstacles to become productive citizens of the world, but surely, just because a person has been horribly abused as a child doesn't mean that everything that they have ever experienced or will potentially experience during their lifetimes can always be traced back to how they were raised?

Joan Crawford quite possibly shouldn't have been a mother, both because of her personal problems or her psychological state, but is she entirely to blame for the breakup of her daughter's marriage? I just found it so sad that Joan Crawford's surviving children have a non-existent relationship with each other. I give this book a B!

B!- (80-88%)

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight