Sunday Favourites: Continuing with Memoirs

 Book: Stolen Years

Author: Sara (Plager) Zyskind
Publisher: Signet
Year: 1981

One of my favourite time periods to read about is World War II and the Holocaust. The Holocaust in particular has always interested me. In grade seven, my teacher brought in a Holocaust survivor to speak to the class and her vivid account of the horrifying events always stuck with me. I guess even as a 12-year-old, I couldn’t imagine such atrocities occurring to people whose only crime was being born a Jew. Listening to her tell her story and noting that she wasn’t much older than my own grandmother, made me realize that it really wasn’t that long ago. By high school, our religion class ventured to Detroit to visit the Holocaust museum. Again the speaker left the class speechless and said his main goal was to tell his story so these acts of violence would never happened again.

As a result, I began to read classic Holocaust memoirs such as Night by Elie Wiesel and Anne Frank: A Diary of a Young Girl. Both well written and well known, but nothing seem to impact me as much as Stolen Years by Sara Zyskind. A local used bookstore was closing down in my town and they were having a huge clearance sale. Most paperbacks were 50 cents each. I came across one with a cover of a sullen-looking girl with long braids. The cover was extremely tattered and taped. I added it to my mountainous pile without out much thought.

This virtually unknown book and author became one of my favourite books of all time. It is the story of Sara Plager living in Lodz, Poland in 1939. As an eleven-year-old Jewish girl, her life is turned upside down when the Nazis invade her city. She is forced into the ghetto, narrowly escapes Auschwitz, and finishes up the war at seventeen in a labour camp. How she manages to survive when so many around her are dying is beyond reason. The description of her struggle is unforgettable and like nothing I have ever read before. And I think that is what separated her story from the rest for me. Seven years after reading it, I still remember how much she made me appreciate something as simple as a piece of bread. It is also one of the few books my mom has ever read twice.

This book is extremely rare. I haven’t been able to track down a copy at any bookstore and I have only found a few copies online. Therefore I have only given it out to a few trustworthy people over the years. I remember it also being difficult to find any information about the author. If you want a story to make you appreciate your own life, I suggest tracking down a copy of the Stolen Years.





*Note: Sunday Favourites is an idea I have to force myself to sit down and write a short blog post every weekend no matter how busy I get with school! I might do similar topics for a month. Examples: Book genres, music, desserts, sports, etc. Hope you enjoy and thanks for reading!


Sincerely, Mag

Sunday Favourites: Memoirs

Credit: HarperCollins

Book: Changing My Mind
Author: Margaret Trudeau
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2010

The memoir of Margaret Trudeau focuses on the period during and after her marriage to former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Married at the age of 22, Pierre was 29 years older than her. She was quickly thrust into the spotlight as his beautiful, young, wife. She had three children with Pierre and suffered from undiagnosed bipolar disorder during this period.

Her memoir is a blunt account of her actions, decisions, and life with bipolar disorder. She admits both her wrongs and rights during this time. She discusses how she was so sick that she left her kids to hang out with celebrities and to dance at Studio 54. She was able to travel the world with her position and status while trying to bury her illness. She admits to not following doctors' orders with prescriptions while relying on marijuana to cope. The story continues beyond her time in the Canadian political spotlight and through a second failed marriage and the death of her son.

I discovered this book after my mom listened to her speak at a medical conference for work. She was so inspiring that my mom couldn't stop talking about her and I bought her the memoir for Christmas. I soon read the story myself and would recommend it to anyone. Margaret still battles bipolar disorder today, but realizes how much she has to live for. The book will give you a better understanding of mental illness and the people who suffer from it.

Book: On Growing Up Tough

Book: On Growing Up Tough
Author: Taylor Caldwell
Year: 1971
Publisher: A Fawcett Crest Book


When writing a novel there is always room for the author’s own opinion especially when the book consists of reflections of their own childhood. But when opinion goes to the point of judgemental and arrogant, it can be a huge turn off for the reader.

You don’t come across a lot of successful writers who are ultra-conservative in their personal beliefs. Many play the role of neutral or lean on the curve of open-mindedness. Taylor Caldwell has little concern for your opinion and she expects you to adhere to her own.

What I believed to be a memoir of the author’s early years turned out to be an opinionated series of hodgepodge chapters pieced together to form incoherent thoughts. After a little research, I realized that the chapters were a series of articles published by Caldwell in the magazine American Opinion. It was lovely that the reader is completely unaware of this before diving into this 160-page novel. What was assumed to be a quick read became a nightly burden to finish.

The front cover is deceiving and definitely follows the old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.” And don’t because this book has a young woman holding her baby next to her assumed to be husband. In the background is a wooded area and cloth tent. So maybe we will be diving into a pioneering adventure. Well yes you do, but only for a chapter (and probably the most interesting of all the chapters).

She begins her book in England at a young age. She grew up with strict, middle-class parents who taught her tough love from the start. Her life even as a four-year-old is filled with chores and duties. She attends school and begins to receive an English education. Without much explanation, the family uproots to America.

Though the first few chapters seem to follow the pattern of a typical memoir of her early life, I am suspicious right from the start. The first chapter is titled Mrs. Buttons and speaks of her aunt who snips the buttons off coats she is donating to poor. She explains this as a typical liberal way to donate. Meaning that her aunt has never met the poor and assumes that they could surely afford to buy their own buttons.

Now Mrs. Buttons seems like an awful woman who donates on the notion that it is the right thing to do, but doesn’t actually want to deal with these unfortunate people. But please Ms. Caldwell can you explain to me how this has anything to do with liberal views? Your argument is weak and you describe that this was one of the incidents in your childhood that turned you into a dedicated conservative? It just doesn’t make much sense to me.

As a child she comes across as a little deviant. In one example, she fakes a heart condition and a serious fever to go home early from school in a chapter titled The Child-Lovers. Caldwell basically refers to child-lovers as people who don’t follow the traditional views of child raising, education, and discipline and who see children as innocent angels who need to be coddled. She wrote this book in 1971 and died in 1985. In the 1970s teachers were still disciplining children with the strap. One could only imagine how she would feel about teaching methods in the 21st century.

Caldwell believed that all children were as devious as she was and that they still are today. She writes:

“Children have not changed. And they are still wickedly clever. They fervently agree with new doctrine that they are innocent flowers, pure and uncorrupted and piteous, the prey of heartless adults…Discipline is now unknown…The schools are in total chaos (Caldwell, 62).”

She also has strong opinions on children working at a young age. She believes at the age of ten they should be doing work for money for their neighbours. By puberty, they should know that they are no longer children and as young adults they should be working after school to take up all their free time.

She makes the point that this is how she raised her own children. Can this even be called a childhood? Responsibilities are one thing. A part-time job in high school seems acceptable. But a person works their entire adult life and one could develop resentment towards such a parent of this nature. Not to mention, with a world full of creeps, who wants to ship their ten-year-old over to their suspicious neighbour's to do housework.

She also speaks on the roles of men and women and how it is currently ruining American life. These are excerpts from her chapter titled Women’s Lib. She writes:

I told my daughters: Marry men who will not permit you to work after marriage. Marry strong men who will take care of you and cherish you, and not tell you their business, and will refuse your help. I had told them from the very beginning that unless woman is powerfully (and by birth) motivated to the arts and the sciences and the professions, and is deeply gifted and cannot be denied, she should refrain from going out into the market places with mediocre abilities…She must then keep to her resolution: Never again to earn money outside her house. Never again to be a ` partner, shoulder to shoulder with her man.` Never again to be independent.

I have accomplished the one success of my life: I have brought up daughters who have manly and cherishing husbands, who have never wanted to earn money outside their pleasant homes, who have concentrated on the sole and natural business of women. To be good wives and prudent mothers, soothers of the masculine brow, good cooks, pleasant companions, and truly feminine. I wish I`d had a mother just like me (111).

… It`s up to you, in behalf of future generations, to lull them back and to again become superior. Who wants Equality with men? No woman in her right mind. Remember this: The strongest sign of decay of a nation is the feminization of men and the masculinization of women (116).

… The decay and ruin of a nation always has lain in the hands of its women (117).

Does this not seem bizarre to you? At the very least hypocritical coming from a woman who spent much of her life working. I am not referring to her work as a writer either. She also talks about when she worked hard in the factories just to make rent and to put food on the table. Even though writing might not be as strenuous as nine to five jobs, it still consumes a lot of personal time to write books. Time she is suggesting that should be dedicated to her husband’s dinner preparations.

Some of her other chapters include attacking women’s rights, mocking healthcare ethics, and criticizing any government programs. It is not about whether or not Caldwell should have an opinion on these topics, but as the examples show she takes these opinions too far and they are extremely narrow-minded. The reader begins to loose respect for her jaded views of the world and her critical judgments.

Book: A Piece of Cake

Book: A Piece of Cake: A Memoir
Author: Cupcake Brown
Year: 2006
Publisher: Three Rivers Press

I love discovering a new book. Sometimes it is just as interesting as the story itself. Often it is just by accident. My favourite book about the Holocaust was discovered at a bookstore closing for only 50 cents. My favourite trilogy was advertised in a magazine I was reading on the way home from Cedar Point. I also find a lot of good reads in the bargain section at Chapters. Why pay more when you can get it for a great deal?

Sometimes I wonder if I hadn’t walked into that closing sale…
Or if I hadn’t been bored and read that magazine…
Or if I didn’t shop in the bargain section…
Would I have ever discovered any of these books?

I can’t help but think probably not. And this particular book is no different. I was working as student assistant in my university’s athletic building. Mostly I just manned the door, demanding student cards for entry, but this particular day was different.

We were cleaning up after a high school robotics function and I discovered this book under the bleachers. I wasn't hard to miss. Its bright pink, sprinkle cover screamed up at me, A Piece of Cake: A Memoir by Cupcake Brown. I was hesitant. I mean a book about cakes?

I threw it to the side and continued with my cleaning. On break I read the back cover. The words sprang alive. Hustling. Prostitution. Drug Dealing. Gangbanging. Unlike its flashy cover, the novel seemed to be dark and grim. Not a feel good book.

At the bottom, had a picture of a middle-aged lawyer named Cupcake Brown and this was actually her memoir.

I was intrigued. How do you go from gangbanging to being a San Francisco lawyer? I stashed it in my book bag. The robotics competition was long over and there was little chance that the person who had left it would be returning for it.

The novel starts off with a bang. Cupcake finds her mother dead, her father turns out not to be her biological one, and the biological father wants nothing but insurance money so he throws her into foster care along with her brother. The insanity of foster life drives her into a new world of sex, drugs and violence. There is no one left who cares about her so why should she care how she self-destructs?

The story is quite graphic. She gives details into her gang world that she eventually leaves behind. There is also her hard drug use and alcohol. She experiments with cocaine and LSD. She will trade nearly anything for drugs including sex.

The author’s brief bio on the back cover gives the ending away. It is clear that if she becomes a prominent lawyer that she finds a road to recovery. And she does but it isn’t without a lot of struggle and it doesn’t happen overnight. Coming clean to her boss about her drug use is just the beginning. She actually never sees herself as drug addict (many users don't) and she truly believes that she would be able to stop at any time. She doesn’t realize how little she knows about addiction.

She finds counselling in woman named Venita or just V as Cupcake usually refers to her. V is a recovered addict and doesn’t take any of Cupcakes nonsense or excuses. As a former addict, she knows how much bull a recovering addict can come up with and it is because of her firm guidelines that Cupcake begins to see success in her own life.

As the story winds to a close, I can’t believe what great book I found. I pass it along to all my fellow reading friends so they too can be inspired by the story of Cupcake Brown.

This was until I told a co-worker to read it. She just had to burst my bubble and put that seed of doubt in my mind.

She too loved to read and when I suggested the book, she just happened to be reading it. What are the chances? She said it was okay, but said she just wasn’t convinced by it. How could she not love it? And then she reminded me of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces and how his story brought millions of people together to believe that people could overcome their horrible past when in reality he made most of it up.

And then I couldn’t think of Cupcake’s story in the same light. As someone who isn’t an addict, it would be difficult for me to remember the amount of details she recalls in her story. I could give a good account of it, but it definitely wouldn’t be exact. How did I think someone who was so strung out on drugs at the time would be able to recall all the events she had experienced in her past life? Was this just another case where the person wrote it as "they" remembered it?

I am still unsure of my feelings towards the book. A good read: yes. A true memoir: questionable.