Coming Home to Myself
by Wynonna Judd, Patsi Bale Cox
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Book Summary Information
Author: Patsi Bale Cox, Wynonna JuddEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2005-09-27
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: New American Library
Book Reviews of Coming Home to Myself
Book Review: Not an Interesting Person, Not an Interesting Memoir
Summary: 1 Stars
You may be fooled by the many positive reviews about this book, which I believe are mainly by Winona's hard-core fans. For fans, anything from their idol is interesting. However, if you are not a fan, you should skip this one.
We live in a time when ghost writers are available for any rich or famous personality to tell their stories. With their communication power, these books are sure to get a good audience. This is unfortunate, because now one doesn't need to know how to write, nor to have a good story to tell before publishing. I wonder how many great authors are still unknown for lack of opportunity to publish, while books about "stars" abound.
Wynonna's book has basically three parts:
1) Her crazy, gold digging mother destroys her childhood and adolescence by using her as a child singer in a country music career. Wynonna is basically a prop in her mother's show, what a doll is to a ventriloquist. She grows up without developing any maturity, insecure and codependent.
2) Wynonna as an adult is wildly successful. Because of her mother issues, she has weight problems, spends millions in an irresponsible lifestyle, and doesn't manage her life, her career nor anything else. She is a 30 year-old teenager. Monster mommy still stays in backstage, pulling her strings and manipulating her.
3) Wynonna is almost 40 (yawnnnn...) and finds a psychology clinic which helps her to have some very basic ideas about how to control her life. She marries a guy who is sane and helps her to have some (just a little) independence from monster mommy. Now she is free to enjoy her millions of dollars and millions of adoring fans.
It is very hard to empathize with Wynonna. She basically never had a problem in her life besides her mother. After 10 pages, the reader wants to scream: "get rid of the witch of mother ! It is all her fault !" But Wynonna can't see that.
Her mother is a calculating, super ambitious, manipulative witch who would sell her soul for some success. She absolutely controlled her daughter and destroyed her psychological development. However, Wynonna is so timid that she just refuses to deal with the subject for 40 years. Even in this book, which is supposed to be the tale of her liberation from mom, she just can't face the very clear fact that her mother is a bad person. I know it is hard to say that about your mother, but then, if you can't face it, why write the book after all ? It is just so hypocritical.
The other problem is that Wynonna's life is not inspiring. I like memoirs because we usually find there tales of courage, of exceptional trials or unusual situations. Wynonna's life, however, apart from the singing career which she doesn't detail nor analyze at all, is just boring. How can anyone sympathize with her problems, like not being able to control her spending millions of dollars in useless junk ? Or having people to do just anything for her? I wish I had those problems.
The psychological solutions she presents are also extremely basic, with techniques like "mirroring", where you just repeat back to them what the other people say, in order to improve communication. It sounds silly and artificial, the way Wynonna does. One would better buy psychologist Erick Erickson's books about these techniques.
Wynonna still lives the life of a teenager. She is one of those new age Christians (she even goes to Hindu ashram) who sees a super special meaning in everything that happens to her, regards her life as a "journey", sees her songs as "life altering works of art", her casual feelings as "elevated encounters with her inner self" (I am paraphrasing). She thinks too highly of herself and her experience. She really needs a reality check.
If you want a good biography of a female singer, buy one from Janis Joplin or Edith Piaf, that is the real thing.
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