Southern
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Memoir Review |
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In 1996, Barbara Robinette Moss won the Gold Medal for Personal Essay in the William Faulkner Writing Contest. Her essay became the first chapter of Change Me into Zeus’s Daughter, a coming of age memoir that was compared to both Rick Bragg's All Over But the Shoutin’ and Frank McCourt's Angela’s Ashes. Ironically, Bragg and Moss grew up near one another in the Oxford-Anniston-Jacksonville area of Alabama. Moss, one of eight children, grew up in the 1960s south. Her father, an alcoholic, was abusive toward her mother as well as Moss and her siblings. Her mother, Dorris, a former marine, "seemed to crave him as much as he craved alcohol." She never quite had the courage to leave. The children learned to cope as best they could with the Christmas gifts exchanged for alcohol, constant moves, and their father's punishments for real and imagined misbehavior. Young Barbara fell in love with beauty. She longed to be an artist. Despite the poverty that left her face disfigured by malnutrition, she persevered, undergoing numerous surgeries. Like her mother, she married an abusive man. Unlike her mother, she found the courage to leave, taking her young son with her. Heart-rending and life affirming -- Change Me into Zeus’s Daughter is a memoir about transformation -- both physical and emotional.
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