Becoming Anna: The Autobiography of a Sixteen-Year-Old / Edition 2

Overview

"My grandmother says I destroyed my mother before I was even born." What does it mean for a girl to hear sentiments like this from a family that is supposed to love her? What does it tell her about what kind of child she is, or what kind of woman she can become? In Becoming Anna, a poignant and painful memoir of her first sixteen years, Anna Michener describes the effect of words like these and deeds even worse. For much of her childhood and adolescence, this vulnerable young girl not yet named Anna Michener suffered physical and emotional abuse behind closed doors at the hands of her parents and grandmother. She was made the scapegoat for her family's many problems and was even institutionalized in mental hospitals more than once. But at the age of sixteen she finally found a new family, and found her own voice. Changing her name to Anna and adopting the last name of her new legal guardians, she wrote Becoming Anna as an early step toward recovery, a self-affirmation, and a powerful plea on behalf of all the other children who still suffer. Hers is a vivid account of growing up under unspeakable conditions. Becoming Anna is not the result of mature reflection, but rather an immediate account of unhealed wounds. We hear from older survivors of abuse what they remember and have learned to forgive; from Anna we hear how abuse and self-doubt feel: searing, and yet strangely hopeful.

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