Book Review: "Illegitimate: A Memoir"
- marthaengber
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
To find out you don’t have the same father as your siblings is one thing. To find out your beloved grandma took part in a Nazi secret eugenics program that encouraged healthy women to have babies by men with Aryan features in order to purify the race is a whole other thing.
The author of this fascinating memoir, ILLEGITIMATE, does a wonderful job of showing her very young years in the care of her grandmother in Germany, until, that is, her mother returns with an American G.I. husband in tow. The family heads over to the US where the author is reared. When she’s 60, the author is privy to the odd confession of her German aunt. Through further investigation, the author learns she and two other siblings out of six were fathered by men other than the guy she believed to bet her dad. More disturbing, her beloved grandmother participated in the Nazi “Lebensborn” program.
What I liked best is how the author portrays the confusion, disappointment, fear and heartache that children bare when their parents and other relatives hold onto dark secrets…until they can’t, like her poor German aunt. The blond-haired, blue-eyed author conveys the years of wondering why she looks so different that the three oldest dark-haired, dark-eyed siblings. And while the author regrets how she missed the opportunity to confront her mother, the author persisted in finding and meeting her real father.
When I read books like this, it becomes so clear that cultures around the world have long encouraged secrecy over openness, which causes so much familial damage. Hopefully books like this will help to change that!
You can also view this review on Goodreads.
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THE WIND THIEF, a novel
GROWING GREAT CHARACTERS, a resource for writers