Review: "I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jennette McCurdy

 

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
Published August 2022 via Simon & Schuster
★★★★

Sometimes all you can say is oof. McCurdy had a childhood that looked shiny on the outside—child actress, successful, a mother who devoted her time and energy to her kids, and in particular to her daughter, to encourage success. Her mother was her best friend, her raison d'être.

But just behind the veneer was something else: her mother's hoarding problem, which meant that the family could no longer sleep in their beds, but rather on folding mats in the living room. Her mother's insistence on dressing her kids, showering her kids, and performing some form of pelvic/chest exams on her kids well into their teens. The phrase if Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy comes to mind—but in this case, that meant if Momma ain't happy, there will be hysterics and threats of violence until everyone gives in. McCurdy knew she couldn't so much as try a new ice cream flavour without her mother getting upset, because trying something new was a sign that she was growing up, and her mother wasn't ready for that. Now now, not ever.

Consequently, McCurdy describes a childhood in which she was never really allowed to be a child. Introduced to calorie restriction as a young child—a way to stay small, to be more desirable for roles on children's television—she struggled with eating disorders for years, with her mother's approval. (Better to stay sick if that means staying skinny, after all.) A father who was physically present but checked out enough to misspell McCurdy's name on her eighth birthday card. A career in which she was valued for her ability to cry on cue—and in which the adults responsible for casting, once they'd seen that she could do so, might demand that she do it again just for their entertainment.

I cannot say that the book makes me think well of Hollywood.

All together, though, it's very well done—tightly edited, with scenes chosen to make their points. As often as not, McCurdy describes the leadup to an audition but not the audition itself, or rehearsing (under her mother's hyper-critical eye) for a scene but not the filming itself—because acting was a byproduct of the rest of her life, I guess. Never her own goal, and not where the real stories are. There's a lot still left unsaid: I imagine there's a lot more behind McCurdy's mother's story, for example, though McCurdy herself might not know what (or might for a variety of reasons have opted to leave that out). But jeepers creepers. I'm glad McCurdy has found a way to get herself on a healthier, and more fitting for who she is, track.