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Book Cover
E-book
Author Adrian, Kim, author.

Title The twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet : a memoir / Kim Adrian
Published Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2018]

Copies

Description 1 online resource (ix, 287 pages)
Series American lives series
American lives.
Summary "Clear-sighted, darkly comic, and tender, The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet is about a daughter's struggle to face the Medusa of generational trauma without turning to stone. Growing up in the New Jersey suburbs of the 1970s and 1980s in a family warped by mental illness, addiction, and violence, Kim Adrian spent her childhood ducking for cover from an alcoholic father prone to terrifying acts of rage and trudging through a fog of confusion with her mother, a suicidal incest survivor hooked on prescription drugs. Family memories were buried -- even as they were formed -- and truth was obscured by lies and fantasies. In The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet Adrian tries to make peace with this troubled past by cataloguing memories, anecdotes, and bits of family lore in the form of a glossary. But within this strategic reckoning of the past, the unruly present carves an unpredictable path as Adrian's aging mother plunges into ever-deeper realms of drug-fueled paranoia. Ultimately, the glossary's imposed order serves less to organize emotional chaos than to expose difficult but necessary truths, such as the fact that some problems simply can't be solved, and that loving someone doesn't necessarily mean saving them."--Provided by publisher
Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (ProQuest Ebook Central, viewed November 15, 2018)
Subject Adrian, Kim.
Mothers and daughters -- United States -- Biography
Children of mentally ill mothers -- United States -- Biography
Adult children of dysfunctional families -- Biography
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Social Scientists & Psychologists.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Cultural Policy.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Popular Culture.
Adult children of dysfunctional families
Children of mentally ill mothers
Mothers and daughters
United States
Genre/Form autobiographies (literary works)
Biographies
Autobiographies
Autobiographies.
Biographies.
Autobiographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781496210289
149621028X
9781496210265
1496210263
9781496210272
1496210271