Monique, the daughter of San Diego Charger’s football great Earl Faison, never imagined marrying her high school boyfriend would turn out to be the most horrible mistake of her life. She also hadn’t imagined she would survive this mistake to narrate her tale.
Playing Dead: A Memoir of Terror and Survival by Monique Faison Ross recounts the author’s experience of a nightmarish marriage that culminated in a brutally violent incident. Her relationship with Chris was unstable from the beginning, but it gradually turned abusive and denigrating.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a gripping, poignant memoir detailing her quirky childhood filled with incredible hardships on account of growing up in a dysfunctional family.
Walls grew up with an alcoholic father and an irresponsible and delusional
mother. Rex and Rose Walls’ nonconformist
ideas about the world initially inspired their four children. The Walls family
led a peripatetic life, relocating every few months. They never imposed any
rules on their children and encouraged them to handle their problems on their
own. Rex was a charismatic man who taught them a variety of subjects and often played
with them, while Rose painted and wrote and mouthed off philosophical thoughts.
However, as the children started growing up, their
rose-tinted glasses were replaced by the harsh reality of life. Little by
little, the Walls children’s dreams of the Glass Castle—the grandiose promises
of a spectacular home to be constructed by their father—started crumbling when
they realized their parents were self-absorbed people, averse to
responsibilities, and they would have to take care of themselves. This
realization instilled a fierce determination in them to get away from their
parents and carve out a successful life for themselves.
