A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me
A Memoir
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4.6 • 36 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Jason Schmidt wasn't surprised when he came home one day during his junior year of high school and found his father, Mark, crawling around in a giant pool of blood. Things like that had been happening a lot since Mark had been diagnosed with HIV, three years earlier.
Jason's life with Mark was full of secrets—about drugs, crime, and sex. If the straights—people with normal lives—ever found out any of those secrets, the police would come. Jason's home would be torn apart. So the rule, since Jason had been in preschool, was never to tell the straights anything.
A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me is a funny, disturbing memoir full of brutal insights and unexpected wit that explores the question: How do you find your moral center in a world that doesn't seem to have one?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Schmidt's memoir which spans his childhood to late adolescence and chronicles his abuse and near homelessness at the hands of his drug-addicted gay father is an emotionally demanding read. The memoir finds its strongest foothold in the primary relationship between father and son, particularly the wrenching scenes of Schmidt's father's rage and misguided devotion, packed between descriptions of a 1970s and '80s West Coast counterculture childhood. As the author grows and begins to connect his own abusive actions and self-neglect to his childhood, the main relationship becomes buried in a jarring deflection of his father's death from AIDS, the sudden adoption of a friendly volunteer as guardian, and overwrought details of his own burgeoning dating life, infused with Star Wars references (before his first kiss, Schmidt writes, "The best model I had for this kind of thing was Princess Leia and Han Solo at the end of The Empire Strikes Back"). If the turnaround moment for a teenage Schmidt arrives too late in the book to have the impact it might, the heavy burden of his early life is keenly felt. Ages 12 up.
Customer Reviews
Great Read
I really connected with this book. As a child raised in a single parent household, we were on AFDC and lived in a public housing environment. However, my childhood was somewhat stable as we had large extended family support. I found myself in tears throughout the majority of this reading. It is unbelievable the different experiences one person goes through from others. Although we had the support of extended family, some of the experiences the writer shared related to some of my own experiences. Especially so when dealing with those who were not familiar with your struggles.
Being three years behind the writer, it feels as if I grow up in a different time. The roles of myself and my parent were reversed from that of the writer and his father so that may be it. Growing up, I was not exposed to the number of gay men as the writer and therefore not exposed to the beginning stages that took place during the early years. However, there were a few gay man that I personally knew that seemed to go off and just disappeared. At the time I did not think anything of it and over time never really thought that much of it to make the connection. Reading this book and thinking of my own experiences helped me to connect with the writer with their experiences.
I hope the writer plans to write another book as there were some things, as a reader, that I would like to read about.
Bored to tears
Usually I can finish a novel in a day or two, but this one took me THREE WEEKS because the author spent so much time describing every room in every single location throughout the entirety of his life. The book probably would have been at least one hundred pages shorter if he had not described every curtain and wall he ever laid eyes on. If you must read this book, flip through it at Barnes and Noble. DO NOT PURCHASE THIS BOOK ON IBOOKS!! You cannot return it and you will cry for days from boredom