Jesusland

Author: Julia Scheeres

(going from worst to best.)

Sub-Genre: Narrative - religious issues

How Many Pages: 384

What does Booklist say about it: "In the name of religion, Scheeres and her adopted black brother, David, suffer cruel abuse, first in their Calvinist home in Indiana in the 1970s and then when their surgeon father and missionary-minded mother send the teens to a fundamentalist Dominican Republic reform school that is run like boot camp. The self-righteous sermonizing would be hilarious if it were not the justification for vicious punishment. The racism is open, from the other kids and from authority. Scheeres tries to find comfort in drink and in sex with a classmate ("His heat and his desire they comfort me. I shall not want"). What is unforgettable is the tenderness between sister and brother, as uplifting as any sermon. Their relationship is never sentimentalized: She is ashamed of the times she turns her back on him, tired of being called "nigger-lover . . . the black boy's sister," but they help each other through the worst with horseplay, humor, and courage. The writing is Dickensian in its blend of the tender, the brutal, and the absurd. Hazel Rochman"

My Thoughts: This is probably my favorite of the memoirs I've read. Whenever people ask me to recommend a book this is the one first off the tip of my tongue. The writing is superb, Sheeres' style is compassionate and raw. You spend most of the book in terror as to what may happen to David, the brother. This is a book as much about Julia's life as it is David's. The first section of the book deals with their time in Indiana, which is unsurprisingly difficult for the young black man and his sister. The real shock comes in the second portion of the book, when the two children are sent to a school in the Caribbean which uses religious indoctrination as a pretext for abuse. The length of this book became a non-issue due to the desire to continue reading. The reader never bores of the stories presented and long for more when the book ends.

Grades: (all scores out of 5)
Quality of Writing: 5
Entertainment Value: 4
Compelling: 5
Total: 14/15 - 93% A