Becoming Anna

September 14, 1998
Institutionalized at 15 by her abusive parents, the author, then known as "Tiffany," was abused for several months by the staff of mental hospitals. Her state-sanctioned treatment consisted of overmedication, physical and emotional intimidation, illegal incarceration and painful criticism from teachers and psychiatric counselors. At the end of that year, when she was surrendered by her mother and taken in by foster parents, Tiffany became Anna. Were this a novel, sympathy for the overwriting, self-sanctifying, pathetic narrator would run awfully thin. Other, tougher kids called her "Crazy Girl," she recalls, "In a world that had never been anything but oppressive and cruel to any of us, they thought it was crazy for me to still have some innocence, some passion, some caring for other people, and some hope for a better world. They called me crazy with affection. They wanted me to stay that way." Michener might convince readers that she is not crazy, but it's hard to accept her rosy perception of herself and the demonization of nearly every authority--and parental--figure. Her vague and predictable descriptions of the mental institutions reveal less than a few minutes with One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest: the "clients" are generally good, misunderstood; the staff, for the most part, are bad, bitter, soulless sadists. When Michener describes her preinstitutional diaries as "a rather disorganized mix of fact and fiction, and hardly anything was finished before the next page was talking about something new," she could almost be summing up the autobiography. Professional psychologists get paid to listen to desperately anxious remembrances and imaginings, but readers don't.

August 1, 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--control that can break a person's spirit and bring about mental and emotional collapse. Michener's expressive writing does justice to a topic that is clearly very disturbing to her personally and communicates a profoundly important message on behalf of all abused and neglected children. ((Reviewed August 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)