Tag memoir

Summer Reading Review: Karamo, My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing & Hope

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

My daughter and I used to binge-watch the reboot of Queer Eye on Netflix— she loved the home makeovers, Bobby’s energy and style; we both loved Antoni and the food. Tan was adorable. And Jonathon is just a lovable force. And then there was Karamo, orchestrating something not quite identifiable as “culture expert.”

When his memoir, Karamo: My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing & Hope came out (pun?) in 2019, Karamo Brown visited Lafayette College. The teenager’s father had him autograph a book for her and we excitedly attended a public lecture he gave on campus that night.

Almost two full years later, I finally finished the book.

I have recently resumed reading in general so the fault does not lie with Karamo.

The book is light, simple in phrase, and mimics Karamo’s speech.

It’s a coming of age story. It’s the experience of a Black gay man, son of immigrant parents, struggling to find himself, share his voice and help people.

He has handled so many situations others know well— issues of addiction, relationships, family, sex, parenting. He spent so long yearning to reach out into the world that he nearly self-destructed in the process.

He’s very respectful of other people, only talking about himself— not violating the privacy of his kids, his extended family or fiancé. He doesn’t share glorifying tales of his wild boy days, focusing instead of why he was behaving that way and what he learned.

He structures the chapters not chronologically but thematically which makes it easy to understand the building blocks of who he is and how he came to be.

And even before George Floyd and #BlackLivesMatter, he begged us as a society to listen to each other and be kind.

Review: With Love From Karen by Marie Killilea

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Marie Killilea, mother of Karen Killilea and champion for research and improvement in medical treatment for those with cerebral palsy, wrote two memoirs and a children’s book about her daughter. She also wrote another book— though I don’t know the content of that one.

I’m puzzled by the title of this second memoir, as it refers to Karen’s correspondence with some American service men during the Korean War.

But the book focuses not on Karen, nor that correspondence, but family. The text itself is more beautiful and structured like a novel. Members of the family are cast with richness, though I think sometimes “Big Marie” (the author as her first born daughter is also Marie) gives the various pets in the household more literary attention than Karen.

Marie says she wrote the book in response to the huge volume of mail she received asking what happened next.

The second memoir focuses on all the children growing up, struggling with their futures and leaving home. Well, except for Karen, who, at least until she started showing Newfoundlands in dog shows, just exists in the background doing her physical therapy and for more than a year carries some unknown demon that she is wrestling and the family just lets her sulk. For a year.

The older children get married. A seven year quest for an annulment is chronicled. And elder Marie Killilea’s long-awaited miracle baby is conceived when she is 43. And then she is confined to bed.

Karen’s triumph is learning to put her own shoes and stockings on.

And in the end of the book — Karen reveals the source of her depression and her decision on how to approach her “freedom.”

I’m so disappointed not to know what happened to Karen. Remember Karen? I thought this was a book about Karen, not her damn dogs, the 80-year-old obstetrician, or what a holy Catholic family and their brood looks like.

Summer reading review: Karen and With Love From Karen

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

These books are directly related to my quest to research cerebral palsy, a disability I have, and chronicle my journey to whole health. With discipline, hopefully I will lose weight, return to strength training and someday pursue my longstanding goals of running a 5K and hobbying as a body builder.

Below please find my original interactions from the first memoir, Karen, by Marie Killilea: Starting the Karen Books.

As I said then, I thought this memoir would be about Karen. And her struggles with cerebral palsy. A condition no one knew anything about at the time.

Now this is not a complaint, but the book is about advocating for a child with cerebral palsy and Marie Killilea’s struggles as a mother— a mother with a history of pregnancy loss, devout Catholicism, children both precocious and sickly.

Karen is merely a two dimensional figure in the background. And the book chronicles many of Karen’s tribulations (limiting fluids to 20 ounces a day to prevent seizures and reduce spasticity, sores and discomfort from what would now be seen as barbaric full-body braces, and despite her keen intellect being banned from school) as well as her developmental triumphs.

The book ends with one such celebratory moment.

In the passage photographed above, Karen tries to navigate a hill. Mrs. Killilea never quiet explains where she was going— to the house? Away from it? Karen throws her crutches down the hill, rolls, retrieves her crutches, falls several times trying to get up, while her family watches and records it on a neighbor’s home movie camera.

This is one of those moments touted as bastions of independence. But how many times do you want someone fall without at least asking if they want help? And this is solely my opinion and my experience, but I hate seeing myself on video. The camera makes the “wrongness” of the cerebral palsy body more exaggerated and severe. Her parents want to record this moment in their Pride, but, to me, and again this is my opinion, to rewatch such a moment is to buy tickets to the freak show.

This family had inordinate health struggles with all of there children and the work Mrs. Killilea did to benefit cerebral palsy research made the world grow exponentially. And I am grateful.

But as I study the first chapter of Mrs. Killilea’s sequel memoir, With Love From Karen, it leaves me feeling that Karen’s condition has led to a 1952-best-selling book that has eased her family’s burdens, allowing them to buy a big, broken down Victorian house and given them a life line after a decade of medical bills for all their children.

I feel like Karen is exploited. Especially upon hearing that the whole family appeared in Time magazine.

Also I note Mrs. Killilea’s writing style has improved. The sentences flow with more artsy grammar and word choice. The description is more detailed. The verb choice strong.

Does she have an editor working for her now?

Bean, the 50-plus pound mastiff mutt puppy, and I are in the hammock. I hope this book presents Karen as a person, not an accessory.