Jesus Land: A Memoir

I was drawn by the cover photo of the author and her brother. It really didn't take me too long to read it once I found time too just read. I grew up at the same time as the authors and it was very interesting to read about the author (and her brother) growing up when I was.

Jesus Land is a very powerful and very personal story. No matter what your upbringing was like or how prominent organized religion has been in your life, there is a lot to absorb from this memoir. The issues raised in this book should be familiar to everyone (e.g. a dysfunctional family that seems to have it all, the tyranny of conformity, mistaking individualism for disobedience, unqualified authority figures who rule through fear and violence, misplaced ideals that lead to the suffering of others), but, fewer people have had to live with so many of them in such a short span of time. As I was reading Jesus Land, I couldn't help thinking that this book ought to be part of a high school or college curriculum. It isn't often that you find such concise writing and vivid descriptions in a first-person account of life surrounded by racism, fanaticism, and injustice in the name of God. In addition, the present tense is used throughout the book to relate the events as they occur to a young girl during her teenage years and includes enough teenager-appropriate dialogue and asides to make you think that Julia either has an incredibly detailed diary or a razor-sharp memory. The narrative's effect is entirely transporting and allows you to understand what life was like in a God-fearing, rural Indiana home and in a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. Julia Scheeres is a prolific journalist, and her writing experience serves her memoir extremely well. This book is dedicated to her brother, David, but for the rest of us, it is a mesmerizing tale of how religion can move some people to act in ways that degrade and dehumanize the lives of others.

This memoir of a girl growing up in an ultra-religious family with two adopted black brothers was absolutely riveting. The racial prejudice and misuse of religion were heart-wrenching. Throughout the whole harrowing story, however, Scheeres never lets herself fall into the 'poor me' victim mentality. Her strength and determination are inspiring. This story will remain with me for a long time. I highly recommend this book.

When this title showed up in catalogs and library lists, I was drawn to it in the same way a kid keeps picking at a scab. I grew up in a Christian home in the eighties, and I too saw things wholly incongruous with the gospel the Bible teaches. I too have pictures of me and my sister standing next to a trailer, nearly identical to this book's cover--except that I'm blindingly white. Julia Scheeres writes with chest-torn-open honesty. The book starts with the faintly disturbing strains of religion gone bad and builds to moments that feel entirely Jim Jones-ish. The real power of this lies in her sympathetic telling of family life, particularly the relationship between her and her adopted black brothers. She never candy-coats the racial issues. She tells it the way it is. And, by the end, she creates an ode to the love and bond that can exist despite evil on every side. In "Jesus Land," the worst crimes of all are done in the name of religion. This is a crime repeated over and over through the ages, but here it's given a personal feel. The very gospel that Julia's and David's parents and teachers tried to force down their throats is a gospel that speaks against hate and lies and hypocrisy. If Jesus were to walk the grounds of Escuela Caribe, you can imagine him kicking over tables and throwing out the moneychangers. This book will raise the hackles of those still locked in religious la-la-land, but it should be read by all as a bracing reminder of all that is good and all that is not behind the closed doors of American homes and churches. If Jesus were present in these situations, I think he would be heart-broken and ashamed. Unfortunately, I don't think he is present in most of the activities that bear his name. And without Julia's sort of honesty, we will only continue to perpetuate the worst crimes of all.

Writing in the present tense, Julia Scheeres writes about her ordeal with two abusive parents who hide their virulent hostility behind an obsession with biblical platitudes. They move their three children Julia and her two adopted brothers, both African American, David and Jerome, to a farm house in Indiana where they encounter cruelty and racism at school and just about anywhere out of their home and receive more cruelty--in the name of the biblicial injunction "to not spare the rod"--inside their home as well. But Julia is spared and she feels guilty for being untouched while her black brothers are whipped and beaten. The abuse is also psychological: Christian radio is blurted into their rooms at six in the morning, spy speakers are on 24 hours a day so all conversations can be heard by the mother from any place in the house, they are force-fed with bible verses, they are subjected to tedious farm labor in the hot humid sun. When her two adopted brothers misbehave, which is often, they are beaten and whipped in the basement with belts, two by fours, and other weapons. Their bare backs have welts and scars. Julia tries to defend her brothers but cannot. She takes to drinking as solace from her sadistic parents. Things get worse when her older brother sexually abuses her. Eventually, she and her younger brother David, who are very close and who are at the center of this book, are sent to a Christian boot camp in Latin America, which is so over-the-top cruel and controlling it could be taken from the pages of Kafka's In the Penal Colony. Not only is Scheeres' book a true account; it's a recent one. I would have thought this kind of abuse and mind-control died over a hundred years ago. I guess I was wrong. Scheeres' prose is lucid, clear, never full of self-pity. She writes without a chip on her shoulder. Her real motive is to express her undying love for her younger brother David, for whom this memoir is dedicated to. If you enjoy Scheeres' harrowing account, you might want to check out Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Samual Butler's The Ways of All Flesh.