Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed: A Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings

When I heard that Charles Ramsey helped rescue three women from captivity in Cleveland, OH, and that the women were going to write about their experiences, I immediately knew that I would buy their books at full price in hard cover at a local book store. If I couldn’t help them escape, I could contribute in some small way to their life now and help sustain local bookstores. Reading their books is much harder.
I bought Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed: A Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings soon after it was released on May 6, 2014. It has been over a year since I bought it, and the only reason that I decided to read it now is because I’m determined to finish the most depressing books before my 40th birthday: Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance–A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power and now this memoir. After Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed: A Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings, I will read Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland written by the other two survivors, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus.
Michelle Knight decided to write and release Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed: A Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings earlier for unknown reasons, but I could surmise that it was less for financial reasons and more because her life was probably very different from her fellow survivors before she was held in captivity. If the high points of your life before meeting your sadistic captor are getting fed and singing at a local church after running away from a severely abusive home, working with a local drug dealer and teen pregnancy, then when you decide to talk, you’re going to let everything out and may not want to collaborate.
Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed: A Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings is a short book and a quick read, but not an enjoyable one for obvious reasons. If anyone tells you that slavery wasn’t so bad, I’d refer that person to this memoir and Jaycee Dugard’s. When Knight refers to Berry’s baby who was born into captivity, she explains, “When you’re born into slavery, what kind of life can you really have?” It feels like Knight was in slavery long before she met Castro, but it just got worse and more obvious with Castro. I don’t know how she did it even after reading her book. She attributes God and her love for her son, Joey. The worst part of the story for her seems to be the fact that people thought she abandoned her efforts to reclaim her child so her child was adopted so she may never meet him again. Unfortunately she knows the answer that Game of Thrones posed: which is worse, being raped or witnessing a rape. Michelle Knight, may the rest of your life be free from any kind of pain.