num_pages: 384
description: HOLLYWOOD PARK is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the countrys most infamous cults and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty addiction and emotional abuse. Yet ultimately his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer.We were never young. We were just too afraid of ourselves. No one told us who we were or what we were or where all our parents went. They would arrive like ghosts visiting us for a morning an afternoon. They would sit with us or walk around the grounds to laugh or cry or toss us in the air while we screamed. Then theyd disappear again for weeks for months for years leaving us alone with our memories and dreams our questions and confusion. So begins Hollywood Park Mikel Jolletts remarkable memoir. His story opens in an experimental commune in California which later morphed into the Church of Synanon one of the countrys most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leaders mandate all children including Jollett and his older brother were separated from their parents when they were six months old and handed over to the cults School. After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. But in many ways life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic.In his raw poetic and powerful voice Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty trauma emotional abuse delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother tormented by his angry older brother subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father a former heroin addict and ex-con Jollett slowly often painfully builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and eventually to finding his voice as a writer and musician.Hollywood Park is told at first through the limited perspective of a child and then broadens as Jollett begins to understand the world around him. Although Mikel Jolletts story is filled with heartbreak it is ultimately an unforgettable portrayal of love at its fiercest and most loyal.
language: English
title: Hollywood Park
publisher: Celadon Books