Jennette McCurdy’s Glad Her Mom Died, and You’ll Be Too

For a while in October, the expressions on my friends’ faces whenever I told them the title of my latest read were sights to behold. Understandable, though, because when is the last time you’ve heard of a memoir with a title this shocking? The cover of the book doesn’t dull the blow either. Former Nickelodeon star Jennette McCurdy, also known as iCarly’s Sam, grins holding an urn with confetti spilling out of its mouth. Put short, it is a book that would make my mother frown and ask, concerned, why on Earth I bought it.

However, the first thing you are hit with when you open the book is not a surge of extreme hatred towards an abusive mother. From the first page on, McCurdy paints herself as a Mommy’s girl, desperate to please her mother. And please Mommy she will, acquiring an acting career, a record contract, and an eating disorder among the way. Even after her mother dies, her presence looms over McCurdy’s life, not unlike a god or an idol. The book is one part an account of living with her mother, and another part an account of getting over her mother. McCurdy describes, in amazing detail, the scars her narcissistic and selfish mother left in her life. With dark humor sprinkled through the pages to lighten up the mood, I’m Glad My Mom Died makes for an immersive read that takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through McCurdy’s early life.

Despite the obvious differences between her life and an average Joe’s, McCurdy’s account of her struggles is not difficult to relate to. Because while not everyone stars on a Nickelodeon show and falls into bulimia because of their mother-daughter relationship, many people can sympathize with the feeling of being suffocated. By a parent’s expectations, by a significant other’s neediness, or by one’s own body weight. Some pages of I’m Glad My Mom Died feel almost claustrophobic, and it is this acute description of feeling stuck and afraid that makes the reader cheer for McCurdy to overcome. It’s also the reason that I let out a long breath at the last page, feeling like I was being set free.

The topic of bulimia was another reason why this book hit so close to home for me. I related closely to McCurdy’s confessions about her body and food—not the eating disorder per se, but the fundamental desire behind her bulimia. I find that while many people feel like they are being suffocated by a certain aspect of their lives, they are also hell- bent on pleasing that same aspect (whether it be a person or not). We develop love-hate relationships with things we didn’t expect to love in the first place, things that had been forced upon us by reasons outside of ourselves. We want to make our parents proud. We’d like to satisfy our relentless lover. And in McCurdy’s case, she wanted to lose the extra weight her mother didn’t like. Her eating disorder grew to look like the contradictory desires most of us have experienced, and we also see this paradox in her relationship with her mother.

So at the end of the day, McCurdy’s a little bit glad her mom died, and you probably will be too once you finish her autobiography. Or maybe not. Whatever your feelings about her late mother may be, it’ll be hard to deny I’m Glad My Mom Died is a great read. Why not drop by the bookstore and pick up a copy, if you have a bit of extra money on hand? My advice: bring tissues.