Review: "Angela's Ashes" meets "Annie" in an interesting memoir
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 22, 2013
This memoir was written by an 80-some year old woman about her childhood during the Depression years. When her mother was institutionalized in an insane asylum and her father unable to care for her and her siblings, she went to live in a Catholic-run orphanage in Ohio. The St. Ann's Infant Asylum, run by German nuns, was of the old European style of Catholic children's education--in some ways, not much different that that of a high-class convent school (if you read Antonia White's amazing novelFrost in Maywhich was set in an exclusive Catholic boarding school in England right before World War 1.) The difference is that the girls and boys were physically abused (beaten) and verbally abused by nuns who never should have had the care of children and in many cases, disliked children but were assigned to take on the task of caring for them anyway. But if  you are a reader of school stories from British private schools (Orwell, for one) you may realize that the brutal treatment of children is less from their being orphans and more from a cultural history where children are not treated humanely in general.Food was scarce (but as it turns out, the orphanage survived on donations, and Terry was living through the Depression, though she didn't know it at the time.) Education was good--if you could stand the ridicule and bad treatment. Terry's family was singled out for especially terrible treatment, and she didn't understand why, even later as an adult, when many mysteries of her childhood were explained to her, including her very name being changed from "Concetta" to "Terfina", a name she despised.As Terry became a teen-ager, she had to be placed either with a family (who might or might not let her go to high school and would use her as unpaid labor) or she could be placed in a youth home. Her father--one of his last efforts on her behalf, fought for her to go to Ohio Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans home in Xenia, Ohio. This was a kinder, gentler environment with girls in cottages, though the matron, Miss Redway was a nasty piece of work. (The "stepmother" of the title.)Terry's intellect and naturally good nature got her through a horrific childhood. She went on to live a relatively good life and as an eighty-three year old woman, wrote up her story. At the end, she advocates for --believe it or not, orphanages or group homes versus the foster care system. She makes some good points to support her recommendations. This gives you food for thought--and even in Terry's time, orphans were often as not, children with one or more parent still alive--not parentless. This is still the case today--many children are not able to be adopted and need a good place to be raised.This story resonated with me because my late husband worked, as a young man, at The Italian Home for Children in Boston. He knew of the terrible experiences that many of the children who lived there had endured. The home was set up initially for orphan's of Boston's Italian immigrants during the Spanish Influenza epidemic. The deadly epidemic hit younger adults hardest, and many children were left with one or no parents. Later, the home became a refuge for abused and troubled children and today it's run with the support of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for emotionally troubled kids who can't be placed in foster care.  It's worth reading "Nunzilla" not only for the shock and horror of Terry's childhood but for the experience and knowledge she brings to the sad problem of children without a permanent and stable home. Her criticism of the foster care system is interesting and worth considering.