⭐️3.25
Poor in every sense of the word. Very little financially, but deprived most of an education and a safe abuse-free home.

At seventeen, Rachel Hanson broke free from her abusive childhood home and we get to experience the before and what came afterwards.

I commend Hanson for sharing her story and exposing her vulnerability. Parts of the story felt a bit fragmented and the lack of organization made it harder to comprehend.

Very gut-wrenching to read, but if you liked the book Educated, this memoir has some similarities and is so very relevant.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6768816701

Pub date: August 20, 2024

A big thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review

EXCERPT: My mother caught me looking at a photo of her when she was in high school. She had gorgeous thick hair and the most beautiful hands with long fingernails. I was rough, a girl with bitten nails and rashes on my hips from carrying the children she kept having. As I looked at the photo, she pointed out that even after having a child, which she did soon after high school, she was thinner than me. But I wasn't wondering about her looks and why I wasn't delicate; I just wanted to know what it was like to go to school. She wouldn't let me go because she said everything I needed to know was in the home. I learned how to do laundry, how to clean house until my skin was raw, how to tend children, how to hide the books she tried to take away, and how to count only on myself to fend off unwanted hands when they were in the mood to torment my body. I learned that my mother needed to make me into something so useless I'd never be able to leave her.

ABOUT 'THE END OF TENNESSEE': "Not a year before I ran away from home at seventeen, I stepped out of the house at dusk, still able to see shrub oaks thinned out for winter, fame flower, too, and dun clay so wet the smell of it seemed settled in my skin." So begins Rachel M. Hanson's debut memoir about growing up impoverished, uneducated, and surrounded by violence. In lyrical, fragmented prose, she lays bare the impossible choice between self-preservation and her love for five younger siblings for whom she had become a second mother. As the years pass, Hanson struggles with guilt for leaving her siblings as she slowly realizes she could not save them. The End of Tennessee is a testament to a sister's love—to resilience and determination—a book for anyone who has left one life to create another.

MY THOUGHTS: I don't think it matters where in the world you are, there are parents like Rachel's - neglectful to the point of abuse, manipulative and uncaring - until it directly affects them, when they suddenly become the world's most wronged parent.

I can't begin to imagine the guilt Rachel felt at leaving her younger siblings behind, or how she coped with it over the ensuing years. The End of Tennessee must have been a hard book to write; reliving the abuse, wondering if she could have done things differently or better. Kudos to Rachel for even attempting this.

But Hanson doesn't go into any great depth when describing the abuse; she relies on the reader being able to read between the lines for the full picture but, for me, this was one of the shortcomings of the book. I think that if you are going to write this type of book, then lay everything bare, empty yourself of every horror that ever happened, put it all out there in the light and say goodbye to it.

The other is the fragmented nature of the telling - it jumps all over the place. I know reliving one memory often leads to another, unrelated, but had these been organised into somewhat more of a chronological order, it would have greatly benefited the reader.

Hanson also tells of the shortcomings of the systems put in place to supposedly protect children. She was registered as being home-schooled, yet it seemed that no one ever checked to see what she was being taught, if anything. Again, on the occasions her mother was admitted to psychiatric facilities, it seems no one checked on the welfare of the children.

Despite its shortcomings, The End of Tennessee is a worthwhile read; I hope writing it was cathartic for the author. I am saddened and sickened that with all the supposed advances of the modern world, children continue to be abused and neglected, and to fall unseen through the cracks in the veneer of society.

⭐⭐⭐.5

#TheEndofTennessee:AMemoir #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Rachel M. Hanson is the author of The End of Tennessee: A Memoir (University of South Carolina Press, 2024).

Rachel’s nonfiction has won Best of the Net and earned Notable Mention in Best American Essays. Her essays can be found in Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, Ninth Letter, North American Review, South Dakota Review, American Literary Review, and many other literary journals. Her poetry was selected for Best New Poets and has been published in The Minnesota Review, Juked, New Madrid, and elsewhere. Excerpts from her novel-in-progress appear in Joyland Magazine.

A recipient of the Olive B. O'Connor Fellowship in Nonfiction at Colgate University, Rachel holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Utah, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri. She founded and directs the literary nonprofit, Punch Bucket Lit. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Carolina Asheville.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to the University of South Carolina Press via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of The End of Tennessee by Rachel M. Hanson for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

I was happy when U of SC Press approved my request to read The End of Tennessee. However, I struggled to read it; struggled to bend my ideas of good writing, or formulaic writing. I ‘ tried ‘ to experience the memoir as a stream of consciousness narrative.
I tried. That method didn’t work either.
I gave up 1/2 way through the book and that’s a rarity for me as I am the one who sticks out a book even if it is a disappointment.
This book has bits and pieces tucked into other bits and pieces, making the timeline, the stories and the siblings all jumbled together in a way that’s just too hard to keep straight. The jumping from one topic to a quick thought over here, to a moment or memory over there was simply too much for a reader to absorb. Admittedly I gave up and didn’t finish the book.

Rachel Hanson's debut memoir focuses on her life as she takes on the responsibility of raising her siblings in an impoverished, uneducated and violent home environment. The pivotal moment of her life is when she braves the decision to run away at the age of seventeen leaving behind everything she's ever know, including her young brothers and sisters.

This memoir offers themes surrounding abandonment, grief, abuse, education, trauma, and perseverance. Not only was Rachel brave in her youth she is brave now to bare her truth so plainly in the pages of this book. The first half in particular felt like an endless list of pain however her strength is evident at such a young age when you read between the lines.

Although I applaud Rachel for putting pen to paper and documenting her journey, this memoir lacked the structure it needed to create a coherent reading experience. At times, it was hard for me to make the connection of certain situations to the specific siblings Rachel was interacting with at the time. In the same regard, the timeline jumped around in each chapter that created a detachment between narratives. That being said, it was well written in each essay and I admire her efforts to share her story.

I am rating this 2.5 stars but rounding up to 3 stars.

Thank you University of South Carolina Press and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review. Available 08/20/2024!

The bravery it takes to lay personal struggles bare is evident on every page. Rachel was deprived of education and was forced to become a caregiver to her younger siblings at an age when she herself needed care and guidance. Her childhood of violence and neglect is heartbreaking. Yet, she preserves and continues to evolve by working through her past and forging a path for her bright future.

"My mother caught me looking at a photo of her when she was in high school. She had gorgeous thick hair and the most beautiful hands with long fingernails. I was rough, a girl with bitten nails and rashes on my hips from carrying the children she kept having. As I looked at the photo, she pointed out that even after having a child, which she did soon after high school, she was thinner than me. But I wasn't wondering about her looks and why I wasn't delicate; I just wanted to know what it was like to go to school. She wouldn't let me go because she said everything I needed to know was in the home." (loc. 465*)

Hanson's upbringing was not one to envy: she grew up poor in rural Tennessee, uneducated not because the schools were bad but because her mother didn't think she needed to go to school in the first place—Hanson's place was at home. And between abuse and neglect, Hanson was often the best parent her siblings had; between abuse and neglect, there was no respite but to escape for good.

"My father tells us he will not abandon his father the way his own father did. Now, as an adult, I know there are different ways of abandonment, different ways of being present and not present." (loc. 1115)

There's a certain flavor to books about rural Appalachia, about the rural South. It is not my world and never has been—I lived in the South, but in the city and outside the mountains; perhaps more to the point, my parents were happy and healthy and stable. I know the humid air of Appalachia and the gory sunsets of the mountains, but I don't know the desperation that Hanson describes.

Hanson does a beautiful job of describing a situation from which there was no good exit: no options that would not either keep her in a situation bordering on unsurvivable or sever her from everything she knew and everyone she loved. It's not an easy story to read, but it's also clear that Hanson has had the time and distance to put measured words and conclusions—as much by way of conclusions as are possible—to the story.

"My mother sent that blanket to me a few years after I left home, the one time she actually had my address. In the blanket she had wrapped pictures of my younger siblings, awkwardly posed, dressed in clean clothes, but their hair was uncombed and their feet bare. I imagined those five little faces staring at the camera, their bodies longing to squirm away, annoyed by the forced posing, but curious about the attention our mother gave them in preparing them for their photos. I wondered if she had taken those just to send to me, to remind me of who I abandoned when I ran away from her. I don't need any reminding. Even my dreams are filled with the voices of my little brothers and sister—dreams that are interrupted by memories of the dark, wet mud of southern ground, the patches of drywall inside our farmhouse—dark humidity, a damp stench, a kind of prison from which escape is nearly impossible." (loc. 1588)

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy via NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

The defining moment in Hanson’s life was when she left home at seventeen. This memoir gives readers the before and the after. Hanson reflects on her life at home as a child and then as an adult where she is living her own life free from the daily abuse and neglect but not free from the guilt of leaving her younger siblings behind.

As a child she grew up in a large but poor family, surrounded by neglect and physical and emotional abuse. Her father beat on her brothers, her older brothers used her as a way to explore their own desires, and her detached mother waved her belief in God around, using His teachings as a way to isolate her children from the outside world and keep them from an education. For much of her childhood and young adult life, she acted as a second mother to her five younger siblings.

<I>The End of Tennessee</i> offers a unique writing style of non-linear, fragmented prose—essays? vignettes, almost?—and allows glimpses in to Hanson’s life, leaving room for readers to fill in the space between the lines. It is a relentless display of pain and suffering that was challenging to read much less imagine. In many ways this book reminded me of <Educated>: a large brood of children living in the hills with neglectful parents; a house full of abuse; a daughter desperate to escape; exploring similar themes of family, generational trauma, devoutness.

In the end, I applaud Hanson for so brutally honestly laying herself bare and believe she possesses a great talent but the lack of structure and the jagged prose took away from my reading experience.

Thank you University of South Carolina Press and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review. Available 08/20/2024!

Devastating, but disorganized. I've read many memoirs that contain really difficult themes of abuse, control, and so on, but this memoir at times - particularly in the first half - felt like an endless list of pain. It lacked the structure I think it may have needed to be put together into a coherent single memoir. The detachment between chapters (essays?) left me struggling to understand the timeline - as well as who was who among her siblings.

That being said, there were pieces that were very well written and captured my attention. Hanson clearly had a childhood ( if that's how one can even characterize her younger years) filled with abuse and I admire her efforts to share her story. I would definitely like to read whatever she creates next. Her passages regarding her time outdoors were wonderful.

This book was not for me. While I feel the author’s story needs to be told, it’s told in a way that lacks order and seems to jump around too much.

The End of Tennessee by Rachel M. Hanson is a collection of family stories, some previously published, about Hanson's mother who moved the family from Texas to Kingsport, Tennessee ". . . for Bible school, so she said." Readers are sent into a world of poverty, mental illness, and abuse as Rachel and her growing number of siblings are kept from attending school. On a whim, Rachel is allowed to attend intermittently attend ballet school where other adults come to understand Rachel's dilemma and support when, at 17 years old, she runs away from the family . Hanson captures life in Bible Belt Tennessee and the children who are negatively impacted by their parents' ways and beliefs. Highly recommended for library collections and discussion groups.

This memoir is a bleak look into an abusive childhood. The story develops through vignettes and memories of the author, showcasing the failures of the systems that should be protecting children. Rachel is not allowed to attend school and is forced to take on the caretaker role for many younger siblings, as her mother and father create an environment of purposeful harm and careless neglect. It was a quick read but contains a tremendous amount of pain.

Thanks to NetGalley and the University of South Carolina Press for the opportunity to read and review.

The bravery it takes to lay personal struggles bare is evident on every page. Rachel was deprived of education and was forced to become a caregiver to her younger siblings at an age when she herself needed care and guidance. Her childhood of violence and neglect is heartbreaking. Yet, she preserves and continues to evolve by working through her past and forging a path for her bright future.

Hard to digest. Difficult topic but an important one. Brave storytelling. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I read almost half of this book. It's a sad read, but the part I read was interesting and I wanted to see what happened, but they started throwing in the f-bombs and I stopped reading it.
For this reason I'm giving it 3 stars.