Unfit by Lara Cleveland Torgesen
Wow this is something I never knew about and it breaks my heart,
this book was fascinating it felt like a true story but was a fictionalized
amalgamation of different people, and it worked well, I really came to care
about Chrissy.
I never knew anything
about the eugenics program before and was horrified that this happened in our
country and how long North Carolina held on to this antiquated practice. If you
don’t know what I am talking about eugenics is- forcing sterilization
procedures on thousands of people deemed “unfit” to reproduce. And who decided this?
People with fancy degrees who thought they knew better than anyone else. Kids
who were sent to juvenile hall were sterilized, and girls like Chrissy whose
mother was on welfare were threatened if she didn’t have the surgery they would
lose their benefits, Chrissy’s mother worked a job but it wasn’t enough to
raise all of her children. And yes before you think it Chrissy’s parents were
married and had children then her father was killed in a car accident that is
when they ended up on welfare.
That Chrissy was ever able to love & marry and have a
happy life was a credit to her strength even when she felt she had Unfit
tattooed across her forehead most of her life. How awful would that be to be
told at the age of 14 that you are unfit?? Especially when Chrissy’s mother
dies too and she loses all her brothers and sisters and feels the guilt of
being mean to her mother after the surgery and what really bothered me they
didn’t sterilize her mother and how could Chrissy not feel anger towards her
mother who had signed the papers before Chrissy was even told what would happen
to her.
This book grabbed me right away and was hard to put down, it
is a fascinating read and well written. My only qualm was I so wanted Chrissy
to find her siblings, I wanted them all to be okay and had been raised by
loving happy parents but with a book like this the reality is she probably
never could find them especially the little ones, but I wanted a happy ending
for Chrissy, I wanted to hug her and tell her everything would be okay, so the
author did a great job at making me care about the characters in this book.
This book is a must read , about an embarrassing and heartbreaking time in
North Carolina history.
5 Stars
Full disclosure: I received this book from Netgalley and
publisher for a fair and honest review
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