Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! A Q&A WITH TIA LEVINGS Tia Levings’ memoir, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape From Christian Patriarchy (St. Martin’s Press, August 2024), recounts her escape from the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement, a group that encourages large families and strict adherence to patriarchal roles, viewing children as “arrows” in a “quiver” for […]
Adiba Nelson is the author of “Ain’t that a Mother,” a hilarious and vulnerable memoir about Black motherhood, Cerebral Palsy, and surviving intergenerational trauma. Adiba’s memoir is timely and so important because it discusses important themes such as Plan B in today’s post Roe v. Wade climate, postpartum depression, and the *shit* show of dating. The memoir even dips into the beautiful world of burlesque dancing.
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Tamara MC, former cult member, interviews Christina Ward about Holy Food: How Cults, Commune, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat, An American History I grew up in a Sufi cult in Texas during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Our diets were completely restricted. For years we […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Top 5 Most Read of 2023 Athena Dixon by Dr. Tamara MC When I read the title of Athena Dixon’s latest book, The Loneliness Files (Tin House, 2023), I knew I had to interview her. As a single empty-nester mama, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, daughter to parents who were only […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! What does a lifetime of loneliness look like, feel like in the body? Athena Dixon examines this question in her second book, The Loneliness Files, published by Tin House, and edited by one of my all-time favorite writers, Hanif Abduraqqib. Dixon’s debut essay collection, Incredible Shrinking Woman (2020), published by Split […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Guinevere Turner Tamara MC interviews Guinevere Turner Turner is a screenwriter (American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page), film director, actress, and now author of a debut memoir, When the World Didn’t End. Turner spent the first eleven years of her life (1968-1979) in n urban hippie commune with approximately […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! By Tamara MC For fans of Educated by Tara Westover, Maid by Stephanie Land, and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Michelle Dowd’s debut coming-of-age memoir Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult contains echoes of all three, yet it is wholly unique unto itself. Dowd was born in the 1970s into a survivalist cult […]
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Uncultured, Daniella Mestyanek Young’s powerful debut memoir, is perhaps the next runaway sensation, the succession to Educated (2018) by Tara Westover. Both memoirs are stories of triumph, resiliency, and audacity. Both girls blaze from the confines of their fundamentalist Christian upbringings to shelter identities separate from their groups. They […]
As soon as I heard about Daniella Mestyanek Young’s book Uncultured (St. Martin’s Press), I knew I had to interview her. Both of us are “cult babies,” children born or raised in cults. Young was born a third-generation member of the Children of God, the infamous sex cult alleged to have encouraged sex with children as a way to get closer to God. I grew up in a Sufi cult in the eighties in Texas, and although our cult was not a sex cult, our girls were sexually assaulted. I was married at age twelve in an Islamic temporary marriage called a mut’ah, and most of the girls I grew up with were married off at age fourteen to men much older than them and usually in plural marriages. So, although we grew up in different places with different religions, our experiences mirror each other in many significant ways.
Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Adiba Nelson is the author of Ain’t that a Mother (Blackstone, May 2022) a hilarious and heartbreaking memoir about motherhood, palsy, and all the deets in-between. Adiba’s voice is unabashed, unflinchingly honest, and disrupts any stereotypes you may have about motherhood. Adiba is from my hometown Tucson, […]