Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter

Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter
Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Total Pages : 321
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780743219501
ISBN-13 : 0743219503
Rating : 4/5 (503 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter by : Barbara Robinette Moss

Download or read book Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter written by Barbara Robinette Moss and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-01-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A haunting and triumphant story of a difficult and keenly felt life, Change Me into Zeus's Daughter is a remarkable literary memoir of resilience, redemption, and growing up in the South. Barbara Robinette Moss was the fourth in a family of eight children raised in the red-clay hills of Alabama. Their wild-eyed, alcoholic father was a charismatic and irrationally proud man who, when sober, captured his children's timid awe, but when (more often) drunk, roused them from bed for severe punishment or bizarre all-night poker games. Their mother was their angel: erudite and stalwart -- her only sin her inability to leave her husband for the sake of the children. Unlike the rest of her family, Barbara bore the scars of this abuse and neglect on the outside as well as the inside. As a result of childhood malnutrition and a complete lack of medical and dental care, the bones in her face grew abnormally ("like a thin pine tree"), and she ended up with what she calls "a twisted, mummy face." Barbara's memoir brings us deep into not only the world of Southern poverty and alcoholic child abuse but also the consciousness of one who is physically frail and awkward, relating how one girl's debilitating sense of her own physical appearance is ultimately saved by her faith in the transformative powers of artistic beauty: painting and writing. From early on and with little encouragement from the world, Barbara embodied the fiery determination to change her fate and achieve a life defined by beauty. At age seven, she announced to the world that she would become an artist -- and so she did. Nightly, she prayed to become attractive, to be changed into "Zeus's daughter," the goddess of beauty, and when her prayers weren't answered, she did it herself, raising the money for years of braces followed by facial surgery. Growing up "so ugly," she felt the family's disgrace all the more acutely, but the result has been a keenly developed appreciation for beauty -- physical and artistic -- the evidence of which can be seen in her writing. Despite the deprivation, the lingering image from this memoir is not of self-pity but of the incredible bond between these eight siblings: the raucous, childish fun they had together, the making-do, and the total devotion to their desperate mother, who absorbed most of the father's blows for them and who plied them with art and poetry in place of balanced meals. Gracefully and intelligently woven in layers of flashback, the persistent strength of Barbara Moss's memoir is itself a testament to the nearly lifesaving appreciation for literature that was her mother's greatest gift to her children.


Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter Related Books

Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter
Language: en
Pages: 321
Authors: Barbara Robinette Moss
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2002-01-27 - Publisher: Simon and Schuster

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A haunting and triumphant story of a difficult and keenly felt life, Change Me into Zeus's Daughter is a remarkable literary memoir of resilience, redemption, a
Fierce
Language: en
Pages: 258
Authors: Barbara Robinette Moss
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2007-11-01 - Publisher: Simon and Schuster

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From the award-winning author of Change Me into Zeus's Daughter comes this compelling memoir about a single mother determined to break the patterns that she has
Beauty's Daughter
Language: en
Pages: 353
Authors: Carolyn Meyer
Categories: Young Adult Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-10-08 - Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The bestselling author of the Young Royals books “delves into Greek mythology with a retelling of the Trojan War from the point of view of Hermione” (Bookli
Hades' Daughter
Language: en
Pages: 766
Authors: Sara Douglass
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2003-09-15 - Publisher: Macmillan

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Ancient Greece: A place where the gods hold mortal life cheap, mere playthings to amuse, delight, and abuse at their will. But those puny mortals are not wholly
Zeus
Language: en
Pages: 84
Authors: George O'Connor
Categories: Juvenile Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-01-05 - Publisher: Macmillan

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Tells the story of Zeus and his battle with his father, Kronos, and the Titans. In graphic novel format.