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Read Like Family: Growing Up In Other People's Houses: A Memoir (2009)

Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses: A Memoir (2009)

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Rating
3.5 of 5 Votes: 5
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ISBN
0316597422 (ISBN13: 9780316597425)
Language
English
Publisher
little, brown

Like Family: Growing Up In Other People's Houses: A Memoir (2009) - Plot & Excerpts

I couldn't disagree more with the readers who gave this book a low rating because it was "flat". This is real life, this isn't a soap opera. You're talking about a girl who spent most of her childhood being shuffled from one house to the next. Of course she's detached from the story, it's a defense mechanism. Obviously those readers don't understand the attachment issues foster kids have, especially the ones that age out of the system. As a reader, I myself felt detached from the story. While I am usually very emotional when reading, I only cried once during the book. However, then I got to the end. I closed the book, and I cried. I cried realizing that she will never be able to just "get over" all the terrible things she went through. I cried knowing that she will never find closure because her past is still very much her present. I cried knowing that even if she ever asked her mom all those questions that were left unanswered, it wouldn't make a difference. There's no answer her mom could give her to make the scars go away. Nothing she could say that would make her childhood any less traumatic. It's stories like this that have led my husband and I to start our lives as foster parents. No child should ever go through life feeling like they don't belong to anyone, or feeling unloved. Regardless if we have a child in our house for a month, a year, or forever, we will love them as our own. Giving a child that sense of peace and security when their whole world has been turned upside down can make all the difference. I only wish there were more foster parents out there who were doing it for the right reasons.

Interesting book. The book allows a glimpse into a different kind of life - growing up in the foster care system even though both parents are living. The hardest part of the book for me was not some of the fairly expected bad things - sexual abuse, ostracization, etc., but the almost off-hand manner in which they are handled in the book.I don't think the book was all that well edited - it seemed to skip around so much as to be somewhat confusing. Also, quite a few of the characters seemed not fleshed out enough. Maybe I expected the book to read too much like a novel and have better flow . . . still, I think the editing should have been better. Anyway, still an okay read. Perhaps the book is supposed to be look her life. People move in and out of her life/the book there are some good stories, but not a lot of depth.I found the ending rather flummoxing. I don't know that it would be exactly a spoiler to reveal, but I won't. If the book had indeed been a novel, I would have found it hard to believe. Of course non-fiction - like people - doesn't have to be believable to be true.

What do You think about Like Family: Growing Up In Other People's Houses: A Memoir (2009)?

Dysfunction in families is common, but I am impressed with this author for having overcome being moved from one "situation" to another having little solidarity. Her great fortune was that she was able to stay together with her sisters. Foster homes are a sad, but necessary, alternative to orphanages which is where I expect these girls would have grown up with such careless parents. Children have no control of their parents, but as adults they choose to rise above or be mowed over by childhood circumstances. She chose to rise above. Great job!
—Jane Carlsen

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12978310Paula and her two younger sisters were abandoned by both parents in 1965. They were placed in a series of foster homes, ending in one that lasted several years. Throughout that time Paula hoped that her mother would be able to take them back, but mostly she rode with the time. She adapted to the situation. The memoir is vivid and does not ask for sympathy. It is simply a recording of what it was like. Naturally, it wasn't all fun and games. At times it was anything but. I couldn't help but wonder if there ever was an attempt to find adoptive parents, or if the agencies simply hoped that the biological parents would be able to take over at some point. I wonder this because it seems it might have been a better way to go and may have been truly in the best interest of these children. As it was, they grew up "in the system" and survived, possibly as well as can be expected, maybe even better than most. Not much navel-gazing here. Worth reading.
—Judith

"For 14 years, Paula McLain endured a chaotic life of impermanence..." (book jacket)"...nearly 15 years of shuttling between foster homes like a water bug between floating leaves and garbage." (p. 229) But what's the first part of that sentence? "I was 19 years old when I left the Lindberghs, ending nearly 11 years with them."How is 11 years with one foster family, through to age 19, "a chaotic life of impermanence" or "15 years of shuttling"?Not quite what it's made out to be at all. Paula and her 2 sisters were kept together through their years in the foster system. They continued to see their grandmother and cousins (less so in their teen years--though she blames the 3 girls themselves. They made good school friends they continued to see after aging out. A foster sister she did see after the Lindberghs died (did that relationship continue? She doesn't say.)Yes, their was abuse and neglect and confusion and rebellion. I did not find it to be a whole lot different than many teens experience in their blood families. I think this book actually portrays the Fresno County foster system in a good light.
—Dree

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