
Uncultured
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Daniella Mestyanek Young
"It’s a dark story that forced me to think more expansively about what constitutes a cult." —The New York Times' Ernesto Londoño
"Although this is Mestyanek Young’s first time narrating, listeners will appreciate hearing this deeply personal story told by the author herself. Share with fans of Tara Westover’s Educated and Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox. Memoir readers will want to check this one out." —Library Journal
"A painful and propulsive memoir delivered in the honest tones of a woman who didn’t always think she’d live to tell her story." —The New York Times
This program is read by the author.
In the vein of Educated and The Glass Castle, Daniella Mestyanek Young's Uncultured is more than a memoir about an exceptional upbringing, but about a woman who, no matter the lack of tools given to her, is determined to overcome.
Behind the tall, foreboding gates of a commune in Brazil, Daniella Mestyanek Young was raised in the religious cult The Children of God, also known as The Family, as the daughter of high-ranking members. Her great-grandmother donated land for one of The Family’s first communes in Texas. Her mother, at thirteen, was forced to marry the leader and served as his secretary for many years. Beholden to The Family’s strict rules, Daniella suffers physical, emotional, and sexual abuse—masked as godly discipline and divine love—and is forbidden from getting a traditional education.
At fifteen years old, fed up with The Family and determined to build a better and freer life for herself, Daniella escapes to Texas. There, she bravely enrolls herself in high school and excels, later graduating as valedictorian of her college class, then electing to join the military to begin a career as an intelligence officer, where she believes she will finally belong.
But she soon learns that her new world—surrounded by men on the sands of Afghanistan—looks remarkably similar to the one she desperately tried to leave behind.
Told in a beautiful, propulsive voice and with clear-eyed honesty, Uncultured explores the dangers unleashed when harmful group mentality goes unrecognized, and is emblematic of the many ways women have to contort themselves to survive.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.
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Critic reviews
"A tremendous story of grit and determination." —Julia Scheeres, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus Land
"Mestyanek Young searingly captures the fear and intensity that were her constant companions in the Children of God, and she draws smart parallels between the dogmatic 'indoctrination' she encountered in both the cult and the Army . . . Readers won’t be able to put down this harrowing and enthralling memoir." —Publishers Weekly (starred)
"Daniella Mestyanek Young’s searing memoir elegantly and intricately intertwines the worlds of religious cult and military, brilliantly displaying their similarities in a way that is as undeniable as it is disturbing. It is a brutal, necessary look at the inherent ways institutions attempt to confine women to limiting roles. Ultimately, it’s a story of resilience and Mestyanek Young’s ability to place one boot in front of the other in the face of the unimaginable." —Ryan Leigh Dostie, author of Formation and US Army veteran
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