With or Without You
A Memoir
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A darkly hilarious, shocking and complusively readable mother-daughter story for a new generation ...
A darkly hilarious and compulsively readable mother-daughter story for a new generation Domenica Ruta grew up in trash-filled house in a hardscrabble town where women were once burned as witches. Her mother, Kathi, was a notorious figure, a drug addict and sometime dealer with highbrow tastes whose life swung from welfare to riches. Yet despite the chaos she caused, Kathi managed to instill in her daughter the idea that art and literature could transcend this life.With or Without You is her daughter's unflinching chronicle of an unconventional coming of age, the necessary and painful act of breaking away, and overcoming her own addictions and demons in the process. the result is a shocking, unforgettable and ultimately redemptive story of loving and leaving.'Make it new,' Ezra Pound directed, and Domenica Ruta has ... With or Without You is that rare thing, a story you think you know transformed into one you have to read to the end. Kathryn Harrison
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Life under an erratic single mom, first on welfare, then a millionaire, in the 1980s proved a wearying contest for survival of the fittest as recounted in this valiant, bittersweet debut by Danvers, Mass., native Ruta. Five feet tall and Italian American, with a loud gutter-mouth, copious breasts, and bleached blond hair, Kathi aka Mum lived from one menial job to the next that kept her comfortably supplied with pain killers she happily shared with her only daughter while concocting conflicting plans for her including school scholarships and early pregnancy. Ruta lived in the basement of her grandfather's house on Massachusetts's North Shore, surrounded by her mother's other Italian American relatives ("a band of lunatics" who enjoyed a "thuggish, moronic code of honor"), as she learned from hard experience to endure her mother's overbearing solicitude, such as when her mother sent 13-year-old Ruta to Catholic school on picture day dolled up like a trollop or traipsing through the most exclusive New England boarding schools seeking admittance. In fact, Kathi's hare-brained scheme worked, and Ruta was admitted to Phillips Academy Andover, where, to her mother's delight, her decidedly square daughter could finally catch up on sex and drugs. Fueled by profits from taking over her second husband's livery business, Kathi delved hard into heroin and other drugs, providing a titanic model for her daughter both to emulate and overcome. Survival required separation, and Ruta's account is a fairly dry, restrained chronicle of a wrenching embrace of health and sobriety.
