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Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into A Family Secret (2009)

by Steve Luxenberg(Favorite Author)

3.76 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1401322476 (ISBN13: 9781401322472)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Hyperion

review 1: Being from Michigan I found this story very engaging and the history of our mental health system informative and enlightening. The author did a fine job trying to see the world from other lenses. He asked very poignant questions to reveal the truth and was not afraid to speak it.. Luxenburg did a great job coming full circle, and was not remiss in capturing the heart of his parents, and his invisible aunt, and was able to restore her existence posthumous. A wonderful wrap and acknowledgement to an aunt he never knew existed.
review 2: This book, based in Michigan tells the true story of a woman who hides the very existence of her sister from her family because of her sister's physical, then mental handicap for which she becomes institutionalized. The story... more thoroughly enlightened me on the standard attitude of the times towards people who suffered a physical or mental handicap, almost making it seem that if you were physically handicapped, you were most likely mentally disabled too. Having a sister born with a physical handicap not too many years later than Annie, the subject of this book, I now understand the quiet determination of my mother and the absolute fearlessness of my sister to attend "regular" school before mainstreaming handicapped children was the norm. My sister was not mentally disabled and with my mother's stubborn refusal to bend to the attitudes prevalent in those days to send her to a "special" school/institution for people "like her", she lived her life as normally as the rest of her sisters. If only Annie had been given that chance. less

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