Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Someone Has Led This Child to Believe by Regina Louise - Available

Someone Has Led This Child to Believe

A Memoir

by Regina Louise
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Read a sample Read a sample
1 of 1 copy available
An unforgettable memoir about one woman's story of overcoming neglect in the U.S. foster-care system and finding her place in the world.
Drawing on her experience as one of society's abandoned children, Regina Louise tells how she emerged from the cruel, unjust system, not only to survive, but to flourish . . .
After years of jumping from one fleeting, often abusive home to the next, Louise meets a counselor named Jeanne Kerr. For the first time in her young life, Louise knows what it means to be seen, wanted, understood, and loved. After Kerr tries unsuccessfully to adopt Louise, the two are ripped apart—seemingly forever—and Louise continues her passage through the cold cinder-block landscape of a broken system, enduring solitary confinement, overmedication, and the actions of adults who seem hell-bent on convincing her that she deserves nothing, that she is nothing. But instead of losing her will to thrive, Louise remains determined to achieve her dream of a higher education. After she ages out of the system, Louise is thrown into adulthood and, haunted by her trauma, struggles to finish school, build a career, and develop relationships. As she puts it, it felt impossible "to understand how to be in the world."
Eventually, Louise learns how to confront her past and reflect on her traumas. She starts writing, quite literally, a new future for herself, a new way to be. Louise weaves together raw, sometimes fragmented memories, excerpts from real documents from her case file, and elegant reflections to tell the story of her painful upbringing and what came after. The result is a rich, engrossing account of one abandoned girl's efforts to find her place in the world, people to love, and people to love her back.
Praise for Someone Has Led This Child to Believe
"Regina Louise's childhood ordeal and quest to find true family are enthralling and ultimately triumphant. I cheered her every step of the way." —Julia Scheeres, New York Times–bestselling author of Jesus Land
"Revealing and much needed." —Booklist
"Her story had a distinctly raw edge to it, as she chronicled . . . how she was deemed mentally disturbed and incorrigible for wanting what so many children from intact families took for granted, and how she triumphed over unbelievable odds." —Kirkus Reviews
"There's pain and beauty in Louise's vulnerability and her willingness to evict personal experience from the singular realm of self and take it into the world." —Foreword Reviews

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 18, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781572848153

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781572848153
      • File size: 9960 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      May 1, 2018
      The follow-up to Somebody's Someone (2003), Louise's well-received debut memoir about her experiences in foster care.The author's first book, which was adapted into a stage play, focused on the plight of the foster child in general and the author in particular, and it established her as a motivational speaker on such issues. Her story had a distinctly raw edge to it, as she chronicled how she was placed in and tossed out of numerous foster homes and care facilities, how she was deemed mentally disturbed and incorrigible for wanting what so many children from intact families took for granted, and how she triumphed over unbelievable odds. After going deeper into some of the details, Louise describes how a chance encounter with a one-time customer at her job led her to a writing coach, who helped her shop for an agent, who placed her memoir with a publisher that agreed to her request for a two-book contract. The long interval before the publication of the second suggests that it was a challenge to figure out where to go next with her story. Fate or destiny provided her with a narrative arc, as one of her earliest caretakers, a white woman who gave her the love she'd never had from her real mother, returned to her life as the book raised the author's profile. As Louise recounts, her subsequent caseworker, a black woman, had insisted that she needed black foster parenting and thwarted the first woman's attempt to provide the author with a stable home. Louise's ambition to go to college was considered delusional, and her refusal to stay with families where she felt unloved or even threatened was seen as further evidence of her instability. She was often diagnosed and misdiagnosed, though, ultimately, she "was unwilling to be forever lost in the vapid landscape of a psychotropic daze."A sometimes-intriguing and occasionally moving patchwork of the moments left out of the author's first memoir and what happened later.

      COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading