Book: I’M PERFECT, YOU’RE DOOMED ~ Kyria Abrahams
Subtitle: Tales from a Jehovah’s Witness Upbringing
For a devout “agnostic anti-theist” (I should trademark that some day), I’ve been reading a lot of NF books about religion, or falling from it. In I’M PERFECT, YOU’RE DOOMED, Kyria Abrahams puts an amusing, humorous take on growing up in a repressive, suffocating “religion” that has destroyed weaker people. She documents her life as a JW from birth to around age 23, when she finally turned her back on the organization permanently. Unfortunately she had to endure a life without much popular music, literature*, movies, but with many weekly meetings, parental beatings, and door-to-door solicitation before that. I really believe that she took the “if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry” approach to writing thismemoir, as it could have been a serious, sad book.
What ultimately saved Kyria was getting involved in the poetry slam scene of the early/mid 90s. She started performing in the “poetry triangle” of Worchester, MA, Boston, and Providence, RI, even making it to the National Poetry Slam. While she was trying to leave an abusive relationship with another JW who had become a leech on her life, she started searching for a new apartment, but was having problems coming up with the security deposit. One night a fellow poet gave her a note and $500 to break free and get her new place. In the (slightly abrupt) conclusion, Kyria says: “These worldly, godless poets had loaned me money when I hadn’t asked for it and had given me a place to stay. When the people I’d known for 23 years stopped talking to me, the people I’d known for 23 days helped me move.”
A good, insightful read.
* While there were many JW beliefs in this book that I found disturbing (e.g., no use of blood products, shunning any other person who wasn’t also a JW, etc.) what bothered me most was their anti-intellectualism. Not only were those JWs who went on to higher education beyond high school mocked and nearly shunned, strict JW’s - like Kyria’s parents - didn’t allow any other printed literature in the house except that published by the JW organization. It’s not only that JWs didn’t want their members to read “great books” (lest they get IDEAS), but they didn’t want them reading anything at all.
