"The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom" by Shari Franke
The first children that grew up in influencer / social media / vlogging families are starting to grow up, and their stories about what that's like aren't pleasant. Besides the fact that it's highly questionable to destroy your child's privacy before they're of the age consent, and that it's unethical to make your financial stability reliant on said destruction and your child's labor, it turns out that frequently domestic abuse is involved behind the scenes to keep it all going.
Shari Franke's book is an important step in regulating or prohibiting exploiting young children online altogether some day. She seems to have written it as soon as she was physically and mentally able to do so. I'm happy she did, the book is very popular and hopefully will change people's mind on what kind of online content they're willing to support and consume.
The book is well-written and the author has obviously made major steps in healing after her mother went to prison, for which I'm glad. But I also feel, reading this, that she's still so young and has a long journey ahead of her. I don't mean this in a negative or looking-down-on kind of way at all, but in a concerned, compassionate way.
She is part of the LDS church and from her book it's obvious that the church played a significant role in her family's abuse, but I don't think she's there yet to see it. There's also a time in her life where she gets manipulated and (in my eyes) sexually abused by a married man with a high rank in the church. Of course she gets punished, but he doesn't. She changes wards and doesn't blame the LDS. She appears to be a strong believer, but it pains me to see her caught up in a church that is discriminative, hierarchical and predatory.
I hope she won't get hurt again, and that, as she gets older, she'll regain more freedom -from her father (who was very much complicit), and from the church or other cults or organized religions too. Despite how hard and painful it is, she's good at eventually seeing through lies and refusing denial. Maybe in a decade we'll get another memoir by her.
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