i found 'becoming anna' a non-stop read from the moment i picked it up. written between her 16th and 17th birthdays, the main content of her book details her time in two mental insititutions. the horror of what actually happens (she was in them in the early 90's) is hard reading. what she experienced, the failures of the mental health system and how children are treated is heart-breaking. in her epilogue she comments on her relief of finally being 18 as suddenly she had 'rights'. before she had no recourse to rebel against her (wrongful) incarceration, the instituions listen to who pays the bills-not who has to endure it. the falsity and cruelty of the staff at these places and the own terror of her abusive, neglectful family make it strong reading.

i found this to be a beautifully written book for someone so young, detailing the pain of her short life.

I am writing to provide some background for the readers of the above
book, since I feel that I can clarify some matters about which some
have been curious. My wife and I are the old couple mentioned in the
epilogue of Anna's book, with whom she has lived on and off for
several years. Some readers have questioned whether a 16-year-old
could write so perceptive an account, implying that she was helped by
others. Soon after she came to our house, she sat down at the
computer and started writing. At first we did not know what she was
writing, although soon she said she was writing the story of her life.
She told us a lot about her past, probably everything in her book, but
the written product we did not see. Rarely, when was pleased with
something she had written, she would read a few pages to us, but we
did not have a chance to read the whole thing until it was being
submitted to the press. She worked nearly every day, sometimes for
long hours, and was very proud of having finished before her l7th
birthday, but then it was 500 typewritten pages long. In the
following year, still without accepting advice from us, she cut it
down to 250 pages. Early in her stay with us, of course we wondered
about her stories and the accuracy of her recollections. We got a
copy of the records from the institution where she spent about a year.
We found no inconsistancies; she tells the truth. Nothing bad was said
about her in the records except by way of her mother's accounts. Some
have wondered how she could remember accurately all the things that
she reports. Of course she may misinterpret as much as anyone else,
but we early learned that she has a remarkable memory for
conversations and emotions. She would give us an account of some
episode, and then months later expect that we remembered the details,
and she knew exactly what she had told us (it all sounded familiar
when she had to repeat it). I am sure that every episode that she
describes is correct as she understood it, and I have a lot of
confidence that her interpretations are accurate. ...

This was a wonderfully well-written book about a terrible subject: the abuse of a young girl at the hands of psychiatrists both in and out of mental institutions. Anna, or Tiffany as she is first called before she changed her name, is not a bad child, but that doesn't matter to anyone: her psychologist grandmother has labelled her "evil" and her ridiculous parents believe it! Tiffany is dragged from one money-grubbing, inept shrink who follows the family's "party line" that she is "bad" or "sick" to another and is labelled all sorts of ridiculous things as the shrinks try to find obnoxious theories to graft onto her. All the while the shrinks are being paid by Tiffany's parents, who do not have her well-being at heart, and are trying to please her parents (and keep the money flowing in) more than they are interested in assisting Tiffany. This is an astonishing book not only because it recounts what was done to poor Tiffany in the name of "psychology" as practiced by idiots but because she lived through it, told the tale, and went on to write it down, thus blowing the whistle on her tormentors. Bravo, Tiffany/Anna! You did a great service to humanity by exposing what was done to you in this book. I hope you have as much good fortune in your own life as you have tried to create for other people by blowing the liff off what was done to you. I also hope the psychological "professionals" out there who find this story have the guts to read it, face themselves and learn from it.