Alexa's Reviews > Mommie Dearest

Holy shit this book. My only context my entire life on "Joan Crawford was a nightmare mom" has been the 1980 camp classic movie, which last week I decided to watch again for funsies. Then I saw the original memoir by Christina Crawford was on Kindle Unlimited, so why not. It exceeded my expectations in every possible way. This is a must-read if you want to see what it's like to have a narcissistic, abusive parent. Now I see why this book was so earth shattering and groundbreaking when it came out in 1978.

Crawford is an excellent writer. Her storytelling moves chronologically from her childhood through to when her mother died and it's engrossing all the way through. And it doesn't skimp on content. I understand the 40th anniversary ebook includes 100 extra pages, which I appreciated. I found myself pushing myself to read more, staying up very late, because I was so pulled in. It's a dense, satisfying read. Just when you think you understand how bad Joan Crawford is, that you have reached the apex of her narcissism, you are wrong and something new and horrific happens.

There are some people, including Crawford's own adopted sisters (ten years younger than she is, so they never lived in the same house as her when the abuse went on; they are also clearly classic "golden" children), have claimed Christina is a liar and say Joan is a saint. I appreciated that in this 40th anniversary edition Crawford includes accounts from some of the tertiary adult figures (from her boarding school especially) who witnessed things first hand and corroborate the nature of her claims. Mind you, I think her own narrative is sufficient--now that we know a lot more about how narcissistic parents function, it's frankly pretty textbook. Including and especially that despite it all, Christina still loved her mother. All she wanted was to be loved back. And she concedes that Joan loved her in her own way, but that way was broken. It's a very nuanced, human conclusion.

I was surprised at some of the choices the movie made, but they explain a lot about why it's a camp classic that bombed rather than the Oscar contender it wanted to be. Yes, they dramatize the most extreme instances of abuse and violence from Christina's childhood, but also the film made a few up, but then almost entirely skipped all of the almost worse things from when Christina was older. I found that portion of the book--the majority of it--far more compelling. It's when children start to become fully formed, independent people (ie: teens and then adults) that n-parents really start to lose their shit and find mind-bending and manipulative ways to exert control. The things that went down at boarding school and then after Christina went off to college were some of the worst, IMO.

The one that punched me in the gut was the letter Joan wrote to Christina when she was 17 after a minor infraction of Joan's authority where she said "you are cheating yourself because you are so artificial--you will never be a warm, *real* human being--" Can you IMAGINE hearing that, as an adopted child, at barely 17--also in the same letter she basically calls her a slut for wearing makeup and passive aggressively accuses her of trying to seduce Joan's husband? Oof. But the movie was a star vehicle for Faye Dunaway, not Diana Scarwid... and it's unfortunate because having read this, even as awful as Joan Crawford was, she still has a lot of humanity in Christina's accounting. The movie turned her into a caricature.

I unreservedly recommend this to fans of non-fiction, memoir (Hollywood and otherwise), and accounts of personality disorders.