Synanon Kid - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Synanon Kid write by C A Wittman. This book was released on 2018-09-21. Synanon Kid available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "I told you mothers do not matter here. We are all your mothers. Isn't that better than just having one?" An ordinary weekend becomes surreal when Celena's mother, whom she has not seen for years, returns to claim her. Told that she is going to visit a place called Synanon, six-year-old Celena leaves her native Los Angeles on a bus for a secluded ranch setting in Northern California where the residents are strangely bald and dressed uniformly in overalls. Coming to realize this eerie institution is to be her new home, Celena is ultimately forced to develop a new strength of being to protect herself against the abusive school demonstrators, the troubled children, and the chilling thought that she and her mother might never leave. C.A. Wittman's daring memoir is a coming-of-age story about growing up in a cult, the unconditional love between a mother and daughter, and how that love helped a young girl to grow and flourish against the odds of her distorted childhood.
Synanon Kid
Synanon Kid - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Synanon Kid write by C. A. Wittman. This book was released on 2017-07-20. Synanon Kid available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In February of 1977, during a weekend visit to her uncle's home in Riverside Valley, California, Celena was taken in the night. Two radicalized women planned the kidnapping. Both were members of the Synanon cult's Kidsnatchers group in Marin. One of the women, Celena would learn, was her mother, whom she had not seen for two and half years. Leaving Los Angeles, she came to enter a strange, secluded world where childhood was an experiment, and no relationship was sacred. Immersed in the strange and deviant society of Synanon, Celena would spend the next five years subject to the unpredictable whims of Charles Dederich, the cult's shadowy leader. In a series of scenes, Synanon Kid chronicles cult living from a young girl's perspective and her search for identity and belonging in a world of physical and familial displacement. From the African American communities of South Central Los Angeles to the racially integrated, yet rural and isolated world of Synanon, Celena tries to make sense of and navigate the dichotomy of the mainstream blue-collar life into which she was born and the counterculture lifestyle she inherited. A haunting tale of estrangement, Synanon Kid, is a coming-of-age story of hope, survival, and determination. It is also a story of the unconditional love between a mother and daughter and how that love helped a young girl to grow and flourish against the odds of her distorted childhood.
Hollywood Park
Hollywood Park - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Hollywood Park write by Mikel Jollett. This book was released on 2020-05-26. Hollywood Park available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. **THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** “A Gen-X This Boy’s Life...Music and his fierce brilliance boost Jollett; a visceral urge to leave his background behind propels him to excel... In the end, Jollett shakes off the past to become the captain of his own soul. Hollywood Park is a triumph." —O, The Oprah Magazine "This moving and profound memoir is for anyone who loves a good redemption story." —Good Morning America, 20 Books We're Excited for in 2020 "Several years ago, Jollett began writing Hollywood Park, the gripping and brutally honest memoir of his life. Published in the middle of the pandemic, it has gone on to become one of the summer’s most celebrated books and a New York Times best seller..." –Los Angeles Magazine HOLLYWOOD PARK is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country’s most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer. We were never young. We were just too afraid of ourselves. No one told us who we were or what we were or where all our parents went. They would arrive like ghosts, visiting us for a morning, an afternoon. They would sit with us or walk around the grounds, to laugh or cry or toss us in the air while we screamed. Then they’d disappear again, for weeks, for months, for years, leaving us alone with our memories and dreams, our questions and confusion. ... So begins Hollywood Park, Mikel Jollett’s remarkable memoir. His story opens in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country’s most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader’s mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult’s “School.” After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. But in many ways, life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic. In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician. Hollywood Park is told at first through the limited perspective of a child, and then broadens as Jollett begins to understand the world around him. Although Mikel Jollett’s story is filled with heartbreak, it is ultimately an unforgettable portrayal of love at its fiercest and most loyal.
Synanon Kid Grows Up
Synanon Kid Grows Up - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Synanon Kid Grows Up write by C. A. Wittman. This book was released on 2018-09-20. Synanon Kid Grows Up available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "Commune shopping," my mother, Theresa, called it as if to imply some sort of fun. But I wasn't fooled. One shopped for shoes, clothes, and groceries, not insular bizarre private societies to devote years of one's life to. After spending almost five years of her childhood in the Synanon cult, Celena has developed a deep longing and desire for normalcy, to live in a house with her mother, attend public school, and meld into the plainness of mainstream American life. In October 1981, Celena's longtime wish to leave the commune is finally realized, and one cold fall morning she departs by bus from the rural property in Marin with her mother, stepfather, and stepsister to start their lives anew. Yet right from the beginning, ideals of how and where to live clash within their small family. While Celena and her stepsister yearn for a nuclear home, their parents are on the hunt for the next utopia. Money is tight and tempers are hot as the four try to navigate the challenge of what it is to be a family while attempting to survive in a society that rewards individualism over collectivism. For the first time, Celena is made aware of what it means to be black in a white world, sometimes struggling with a level of invisibility that she was not prepared for. Longing to belong somewhere, she develops the fierce desire to return to Los Angeles and the African American communities she came from. As Celena grows into a young woman, her existential angst has her questioning God's existence and taking a hard look at materialism and the values of the American mainstream culture that she once idealized. Over time, she learns to embrace the counterculture lifestyle of the Santa Cruz community that she and her family have settled in. Through her stepfather's role as a drug counselor at the Sunflower House rehab, she comes to have a deeper understanding of what the Synanon cult was all about and why people initially became attracted to the commune. This is the story of a young woman's search for identity while coming to terms with her past as a Synanon kid.
The Rise and Fall of Synanon
The Rise and Fall of Synanon - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Rise and Fall of Synanon write by Rod Janzen. This book was released on 2023-10-03. The Rise and Fall of Synanon available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The definitive account of Synanon. On a fall day in 1978, Los Angeles attorney Paul Morantz reached into his mailbox to collect his mail and was nearly killed. He was bitten by the four-foot-long rattlesnake that had been put there by members of a cultlike group called Synanon. Chuck Dederich—a former Alcoholics Anonymous member who coined the phrase "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"—established Synanon as an innovative drug rehabilitation center near the Santa Monica beach in 1958. Synanon quickly evolved into an experimental commune and religion that attracted thousands of members and was strongly committed to social justice and progressive education. Twenty years later, when Dederich was arrested for the Morantz attack, Synanon had devolved into a paranoid community that followed its egomaniacal leader in whatever direction he chose to take. Based on extensive primary sources and interviews with former members, The Rise and Fall of Synanon explores how the group arose in the context of American social, political, and economic trends. Historian Rod Janzen argues that Synanon's downfall resulted from members giving too much power to Synanon's charismatic founder. The subject of a new documentary and podcast, this community serves as a mesmerizing case study of how alternative societies can change over time and how the general public's reactions to such societies can shift from tolerance to fear and opposition.
