Hello,   There is a very interesting book being published this month, _title_d: Becoming Anna . I certainly will buy myself a copy as soon as this book is available. It sounds like a most intriguing expose of your pathetic society and it's malevolent nature, by a victim of horrific child abuse, who managed to somehow keep her soul alive. Below we get a few preview excerpts from the book, as well as outline of the horific trauma that your society deliberately chose to allow Anna Michener, now aged 21, to endure throughout her childhood.   Anna's Mommy and Daddy, to whom she was forcibly enslaved at birth by your society, beat and brutalized her, physically and emotionally. Her other Family Unit slaveowners, like her grandma, were just as brutally abusive. When Anna reached the age of 14, they decided that their slave had outlived her usefulness, and so they threw their slave into a mental institution. Your sociey of course, recognized that the slave WAS a slave, and if the legal owners wanted to incarcerate their piece of owned property in a loony bin, that was their Sacred Right, _base_d upon the INSANE cultural mores that exist in your culture.   So our tormented slave went straight from the frying pan into the fire, thrown into a loony bin where she was subjected to more trauma and brutality. But guess what? The loony bin ultimately HELPED Anna to keep her soul alive. You see, she had OTHER VICTIMS with her, in the loony bin, and together the stronger ones were able to keep their souls alive. That is why orphanages, group homes, even psychiatric wards, are generally FAR BETTER places for a child to grow up, than for the child to be in the possession of an inferior or malevolent Family Unit. Within a family unit, there can often be NO support of any kind. Thus no HOPE. Nothing to use to keep your soul alive. That was my experience. But within orphanages, group homes, juvenile detention centers, or loony bins, there is nearly ALWAYS SOMEBODY, at least one person, be it a fellow child or a counselor or a psychiatrist, etc...that the child, if she/he WANTS to keep their soul alive, can USE to maintain their own soul life, no matter how much abuse or trauma is still being imposed.   Anna decided to write this book while she was still being forcibly incarcerated at the loony bin. It sounds like the primary focus of the book will be on how the mental health system brutalizes and torments already abused and tortured children, once it gets ahold of them. This is of course the fault of your perverse society. Hopefully the book will also detail the suffering and abuse that the 2 slaveowners imposed upon Anna, in the first 14 years of her life, when she was JUST as much a prisoner of her parents, as she was after age 14, of the mental institution.   Anyway, even though my soul is dead, I do enjoy reading the horrific life stories of victims who managed to keep their souls alive, and therefore this book WILL be purchased and read by me, as soon as it becomes available. According to Amazon.com, the book is ALREADY available and for sale. So I guess I'd better mosy on down to a bookstore sometime soon and shell out the $15-$20. Below is some info and reviews of the book, from Amazon.com, followed by a wire article.   Take care,                                        JOE   The following appears courtesy of the Amazon.com online bookstore, located at: http://www.amazon.com: Becoming Anna : The Autobiography of a Sixteen-Year-Old by Anna J. Michener List Price: $22.00 Our Price: $15.40 Availability: This _title_ usually ships within 24 hours. Hardcover - 262 pages (July 1998) University of Chicago Press; ISBN: 0226524019 Reviews From Booklist , August 19, 1998 In 16-year-old Michener's extraordinary memoir, written shortly after she assumed a new identity and new name, she recounts a childhood of physical and emotional abuse, first at the hands of her family, then at two facilities (one private, one state run) in which she was institutionalized for much of her adolescence. With wisdom beyond her years, this young author relates her early instinctive knowledge that crazy is a label applied to perfectly sane children whose behavior is a normal reaction to horrible conditions, a label used by uncaring and abusive family members to obscure the reality of mistreatment, and one which experts and facility staff members are all too willing to apply. With heartbreaking acuity, she describes the oppressive control imposed by institutions through the use of drugs, discipline, and monitoring

I was wondering if you know anything about a similar book called A Child Called It .  It could be called Story of a Child Called It or something like that. The book is about a boy who was picked out of several children by his mother to be horribly and constantly abused and starved.  He was placed in a foster home at about age 10 or 11 after school officials called the police. Shortly afterward, his mother had the nerve to try to threaten him into changing his testimony in family court to protect his evil mother but a social worker got the truth out of him.  This same hideous woman then encountered him in the street one day talking to his brother and chased him.  The author (and victim) believed it was because the brother had become the new it .  It is hard for me to look at any new books because all the Crown book stores here are closed down and big shopping malls make me nervous.  I don't know if I want to read this whole depressing book but I would be curious to know if this mother was ever arrested or jailed and what ever happened to her and her husband who didn't participate in the abuse but did absolutely nothing to stop it.   Dogs & children first.

The book is about a boy who was picked out of several children by his mother to be horribly and constantly abused and starved.  He was placed in a foster home at about age 10 or 11 after school officials called the police. Shortly afterward, his mother had the nerve to try to threaten him into changing his testimony in family court to protect his evil mother but a social worker got the truth out of him.  This same hideous woman then encountered him in the street one day talking to his brother and chased him.   Sounds interesting. Below is a review of the book, as well as some other info: Availability: This _title_ usually ships within 2-3 days. Paperback - 184 pages Reissue edition (October 1995) Health Communications; ISBN: 1558743669 Reviews The publisher, Health Communications. HCI-online.com , November 7, 1997 News Update! 11/7/97