I'm Glad My Mom Died
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Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard about Jennette McCurdy’s memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died; however, I’ll concede that you’re not necessarily living under a rock if you haven’t heard of Jennette McCurdy. She was Sam on iCarly, and while I wasn’t a big Nickelodeon girly (Team Disney), I definitely dabbled in the show in my youth. Real recognize real- the show was a huge success.
Lots of things have come out about how Dan Schneider, the guy behind a bunch of kids hits like Drake & Josh, The Amanda Show, Zoey 101, etc. was gross and manipulative, and Jennette confirms that her work environment was not healthy. What exacerbated it even more was her horrible mother. There’s actually a full hundred pages of stuff in this memoir before it even gets to the iCarly stuff. Her mom was a narcissistic nightmare who forced Jennette into acting as an attempt to live vicariously through her. Just when you think she can’t get any worse, she gets worse. With every single chapter.
So, it’s a dark read. All different types of abuse, eating disorders (her mom introduced her to “calorie restriction” at age 11), addiction ,etc.-- it’s a massive trigger warning. That being said, it’s funny. It’s immediately obvious that Jennette is a talented author with a wry, clever sense of humor. She brings a certain levity to the heaviness.
She also writes each chapter in the present tense. So, even harkening back to her younger years, the scenes are vivid and have the voice of someone that age. It’s engaging and all the more horrific. She separates the book into two sections: before her mom’s death and after. The “after” surprised me in many ways and I particularly liked her perspective on her therapists. She wasn’t afraid to talk shit because that’s how she felt about the recovery process in those moments. ~I don’t wanna actually work on myself right now so screw my therapist~
I give this book 4 out of 5 flames. The writing itself was very good, but I can’t give a full 5/5 to something so dark. While she has come out the other side, it’s deeply depressing and hard to pick up at times. That being said, it’s incredibly vulnerable at every turn and there’s something refreshing about reading someone’s rawest moments. The book also put me into a philosophical dilemma. Personally, I don’t believe in good and evil as starkly distinct concepts. As in, I don’t think someone is “good” or “evil”, I think everyone falls on a spectrum. So as I was reading about what a wench her mom was, it was hard for me to not think to myself this person is evil. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how anyone, much less Jennette, can find compassion for this person, which sent me down a rabbit hole thinking about how trauma begets trauma. Anyway, that’s all to say that this book became more than I thought it would be. Also, Miranda Cosgrove is an actual queen.
