Born to Stand Out: Daniella Mestyanek Young Interviewed by Tamara MC

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.

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Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured, St. Martin’s Press, 2022

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 […]

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“Just Show Up”: Adiba Nelson Talks About AIN’T THAT A MOTHER with Tamara MC

Want to listen to the article? Great–listen here! Adiba Nelson’s hilarious, heartbreaking, and bold debut memoir Ain’t that a Mother: Postpartum, Palsy, and Everything in Between (Blackstone, 2022) explores the cavernous lows of postpartum depression, the joys and challenges of raising a daughter with high medical needs, the naughtiness of burlesque dancing, and all the messiness in […]

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INTERVIEW: Adiba Nelson, Author of Ain’t That a Mother

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, […]

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