Memoirs of abused female cultists.

I started reading "Heaven's Harlots" yesterday, a memoir of an ex-Children of God member who talks about her time flirty fishing and being a prostitute for The Family. I found the intro confusing -- it's about being in Monte Carlo and bedding a Lebanese Christian in this historic old hotel only to be paid for sex for the first time ever in her life - he stuffs some francs in her jeans-pocket for the cab ride home after she gives him an erotic massage, only it's way too much for the cabride, as she realizes as she sits at an outdoor cafe having a cappucino brought to her by a stylish waiter -- only the style is very weird... With the setting and her attention to what she and the guy were like, it's like a romance novel, almost, only it's not, and there's not the level of literary contrast you'd expect to make this a horrifying memoir with the trappings of a romance novel, so it ends up being more long-winded and overwrought than affecting, especially since her account goes on for like twelve pages.

In a way, this reminds me of the one memoir of this one ex-Mormon fundamentalist polygamist wife I started, whose first chapter dealt with how she as the sole tomboy in town would be going down to the river in her overalls and be flyfishing with all the boys in town, who all had biblical names and blonde hair and were tanned and had strong arms, and how something was horribly, horribly wrong since no love could blossom in a place where everyone knew the women were saved for the older men and they'd force you into a long dress and crush your the life of your soul as you gave yourself again and again to these respected but awful old men who ran the community and who were in fact the fathers of most of the children who she played with and who all looked alike and who would give her daughters that she would see grow up and be given to men like her husband and father, if not actually her husband and father... When said in short it's compelling, but at about twenty pages it's pushing it.

I think that overall the most compelling memoir of abuse I've read is "I, Tina". Tina Turner is very matter-of-fact, and her abuse is that much more horrific for it. To quote from memory, every once in a while she'd talk about a night out after a recording session, and then end her story with, "And then we went home and Ike beat me with a shoetree." I think everyone should read "I, Tina".