PDF Ebook Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman

PDF Ebook Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman

Currently, this resented book is shared in the web link. You have to go seeing the link and also obtain guide. By saving this Mating In Captivity: A Memoir, By Helen Zuman in the soft data forms, you could separate it or include it into some kinds of gadgets. Computer, gizmo, or laptop computer can be selection to save this book application. So now, when you have already the system of on-line publication, it's better to evoke this book to check out.

Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman

PDF Ebook Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman

Just what's your task now? Is this your leisure? Just talking in your YM? Ohm, we believe that you need brand-new activity currently. Just what about reading publication? It's monotonous? Never, really there is a very interesting book that could help you to make use of the moment extremely well. Mating In Captivity: A Memoir, By Helen Zuman is the title of guide. This publication is not a challenging publication. Of course, it is very ideal for you in this time, the enjoyable publication and amuse topic to review.

Well, in regard to this trouble, what sort of book do you require currently? This Mating In Captivity: A Memoir, By Helen Zuman It's actually wow! We are also coming with the collection of this book soft file below. It is not example by coincidence. This is the result of your effort to always follow exactly what we offer. By discovering guide in this website it proves that we constantly give guides that you really require a lot.

By downloading this book soft file, you could begin reading Mating In Captivity: A Memoir, By Helen Zuman from currently. It will certainly not force you to constantly review it each time. Juts use your leisure also couple of mins. This is why when you want to see how the book material is used; you must review it from the front web page. Yeah, spend your time to review it. This is our most advised publication to check out when you want to opt for some journeys as well as getaways.

Then, when you truly love to see exactly how the requirements of this publication as excellent book, you can straight get it as amazing book. This publication is truly again suggested in order to boost you to think an increasing number of. When Mating In Captivity: A Memoir, By Helen Zuman has been gathered, you must have recognized just how this publication is called for. So, which time should be the very best time to begin obtaining as well as reading this publication? Asap is the most effective solution.

Review

“This entertaining depiction of life in a cult pits the appeal of belonging against the desire for self-determination. An enlightening read.”—Julia Scheeres, New York Times best-selling author of Jesus Land “If you have joined, left, or wondered about a utopian group, you should read Mating in Captivity. Fascinating, disturbing, and ultimately inspiring, this is a brave, honest book.”—Margaret Hollenbach, author of Lost and Found: My Life in a Group Marriage Commune“Just as the Zendik community, a cult, pulled Helen Zuman in and held her, her account of her time there will pull you in and hold you. Her clear-eyed observations of her fellow idealists―and of herself―are honest, compelling, and sophisticated.”—Daniel Menaker, author ofMy Mistake: A Memoir“How timely, how telling this story of an inexperienced young woman who fell prey to a cult because of the abuse to which she’d been subjected by male strangers. Only within the fold, where there were rules protecting the women, did she feel safe enough to explore her sexuality and learn to love. So she gave them her possessions, her will, her youth. Read Mating in Captivity as a cautionary tale, one I hope will spark a desire to create a better world for our daughters."—Leah Lax, author of Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home“Helen Zuman was a believer. She believed in the perfectibility of community, in the ability of young dreamers to transform traditional sexual norms by getting back to the land. That Zendik Farm was ultimately exposed for her as a tyranny built on lies somehow does not destroy the idealism of Zuman's original impulses, as she tells her story in Mating in Captivity. No, she is able to hold up her youthful self alongside her wiser older self, without useless moralizing, and thereby show respect for the young people drawn to this cult, as well as to shed light on the long history of American pastoral communal experiments. She does all this with restraint and wit, and a deft instinct for entertaining incident and character. A page turner, with purpose!” —Philip Weiss, author of American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps“Zendik Farm has long been both mysterious and intriguing. Helen Zuman has given us her wrenchingly personal and deeply insightful story of her time in this most unusual of communes. Others might see the group and their own experience differently, but few will provide a better-written or more probing account of Zendik.”—Timothy Miller, author of The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond“Like Animal Farm and 1984, Mating in Captivity shows how shared delusion feeds creeping oppression. A keen study of tyranny in microcosm, and the costs of acquiescence.”—Ryan Grim, author of This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America“Zuman . . . retains her sense of agency (and humor) as she weighs Zendik’s weird creed and power plays against the sense of righteousness and belonging that drew her in. Her whip-smart prose . . . conveys the squalid exuberance of Zendik’s blend of idealism and fraud [in this] engrossing and offbeat story of ideological bonds that chafe―and sometimes liberate.”—Kirkus Reviews, (starred review)“Raw in perspective, this challenging memoir of religious fanaticism never adequately addresses the nagging question: Was Zuman a victim, or did she freely seek the group out because she was looking for the experiences Zendik promised to provide?”—Library Journal“Escape from mainstream society and delve into a mysterious cult world. Writer and Beacon resident Helen Zuman did this for real in 1999. . . . Read about the manipulation she endured and what it taught her in this unusual, tell-all memoir.”―Chronogram“Helen is a riveting storyteller. . . . The communities movement would benefit from many more memoirs of this caliber.”―Communities magazine

Read more

About the Author

Helen Zuman is a tree-hugging dirt worshipper devoted to turning waste into food, and the stinky guck of experience into fertile, fragrant prose. She holds a B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard and a Half-FA in memoir from Hunter College. Raised in Brooklyn, she lives with her husband in Beacon, NY and Black Mountain, NC. For more on life at and after Zendik, visit helenzuman.com.

Read more

Product details

Paperback: 248 pages

Publisher: She Writes Press (May 8, 2018)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1631523376

ISBN-13: 978-1631523373

Product Dimensions:

5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.6 out of 5 stars

6 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#1,723,797 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

A riveting look at how and why a sensitive and bright young woman ended up in a cult—without realizing it. I loved going along on this journey, and watching the author learn and grow. Written in stunning prose, I was carried along, amazed by the power of thought to create our experience. In the end, we're all the same. This could happen to anyone—even an astute, gifted wordsmith like Helen Zuman. Brava! Loved it! So closely observed, honest, and brave.

First I’d like to say right up front that I am a former Zendik. I lived at Zendik Farm Commune as a Zendik from early 1986 until my departure in early 1990. Among the Zendiks I was called Kezo.The author, Helen Zuman, and I have never met. Her time among the Zendiks occurred many years after I’d moved on.I love Helen Zuman for writing this book! Many, many people have lived among the Zendiks over the 30 plus years The Farm existed. Some stayed only the briefest time, and others stayed for decades. Some left Zendik Farm emotionally destroyed, and others left with mostly happy memories. As far as I know, very few have written about their time spent living at Zendik Farm, and I doubt any will ever write a more honest, unflinching account than Zuman has.Helen’s book is essential reading for anyone who ever lived at Zendik, for everyone who ever had dealings with the Zendiks, and perhaps even for those who have heard of the Zendiks.The account you’ll read in this book of what Zendik Farm was really like is dramatically different from my own experience of Zendik Farm. I know beyond a shadow of doubt that there was real genius in Wulf Zendik’s philosophical teachings. (Wulf Zendik established and ruled Zendik Farm until the decline of his health and his eventual death in June 1999, before Helen Zuman’s arrival.) I moved to Zendik on my twenty-first birthday in 1986, and I know absolutely that Wulf’s teachings and guidance set my entire life on a course for happiness, self-determination, and success. I will always love Wulf for that.In the pages of Helen Zuman’s book, “Mating in Captivity”, you’ll read of an entirely different kind of experience.This book is a page turner! I could not put it down. The author has a finely tuned sense of rhythm and a keen feel for language that puts the reader right in the middle of her story. The raw honesty with which the author spins her tale of shame and fear (her own and others), of sexual awakening and of a young life interrupted, invokes in spirit and vibrant energy the likes of Henry Miller (author of “Tropic of Cancer”), William S. Burroughs (author of “Naked Lunch”), and Henry Bukowski (author of “Ham on Rye” and “Factotum”).To be fair, I will not be recommending this book to family and friends, even though I very much enjoyed reading Helen’s stories from first to last. I will not recommend this book to loved ones because Helen Zuman’s account of Zendik Farm left me feeling ashamed of my time as a Zendik in a way I have never felt ashamed of those years before. That said, any book that makes us think and feel is an important book worth reading.For anyone who does not personally know me, you must read this book!

The author has come transparently to this page. Her words are alive and create a vibrant reality with the heart of the reader, a reality where I, too, could have lived. Who has not experienced harsh judgement, and who experiencing harsh judgement has avoided internalizing it?The cult isolates, the cult nurtures, the cult disciplines. The individual is fed by fear and love.This is a book for the curious. It will stay with this reader for quite some time.

Zuman's account of her post college graduation years at Zendik - a Farm, commune, community, cult - goes beyond any autobiographical narration. Her reflections of her experiences are shown in her wanderlust for self-discovery, love, validation, and belonging. She gives her reader a deep insight into her journey through a very complicated, confusing world.

Helen is a marvelous writer. In Mating in Captivity, she's written an engrossing and relatable narrative built out of her personal experience at Zendik Farm. It's a cliché, but I couldn't put the book down. I loved this book and look forward to what's next from this author.

I enjoyed this story, although I ended up quite annoyed by the character/author. She doesn't manage to tell us much about herself at the beginning, and it takes a while to learn what she is like, which we do from what other characters say to her and from her actions towards others. She is criticized many times by others as being competitive in a bad way, but she never seems to see this flaw in herself and instead celebrates that she got the best grades on tests in high school - who cares? She seems selfish, clueless, and not capable of making good decisions. She is obsessed by sex, but repeatedly discards budding sexual relationships or undermines them through outrageous self-centeredness and horniness. She thinks she's so smart, but ends up bumbling from one aimless activity to another, often through dangerous and risky behavior like solo hitch-hiking or hiking and traveling by herself. I found myself NOT so concerned with the oppressive and mind-controlling politics of the commune/cult, which I think is what the book is supposed to be about, and much more concerned with just what dumbo mistake this young woman was going to make next. I was very happy that she ended up married to a lovely man, and I guess she just finally GREW UP.I found the language lively and compelling, if at times a bit contrived. Sometimes I thought the imagery and writing were great, and other times, I sighed to read "His eyes twinkled with mischief" or similar, yet again. Once or twice the writing was too obscure and I couldn't make sense of what she was talking about.The other characters, meaning most of the people in the cult or her family, or people she met up with outside of the cult, mushed together a bit. I didn't feel that most of them came alive distinct from each other. Yet another earnest young man that she does or doesn't sleep with, and then dumps, kind of. As a writer, she gave us plenty of conversations, meaning he said, then she said, with quotes around the words. I found these not to be that well done - everybody sounded the same and talked the same way. The author missed opportunities to bring the characters more alive through additional crafting of the conversations.I loved it that she was so frank about how she learned about sex and I thought she did a wonderful job writing about sex and relationships. She comes across as being rather mechanistic about sex, rather than romantic, which I think is great. She has a few horrific experiences involving sexual assault and wonders if she brought them on herself, and I do too, sort of, wonder the same thing. Where are her self-protection instincts? Doesn't she know that the world is full of predators - every girl knows this. She arranges for a truly nasty fake-rape setup that seems super unfair to the man involved, and I was glad that she tells us that she apologized to him years later. This episode was very well described and quite moving and compelling.I know that memoir is only meant to tell the story of part of your life, but I found it odd that she went to Harvard and tell us almost nothing about her time there. Surely that would be an important time in your life? She took a year off during college, so this was a five year span. During this time we are to believe that she had no romantic relationships. How can this be? She isn't ugly and in fact is good looking in an intense sort of way - how can such a horny young woman spend five years without dating anybody? This makes me distrust her voice a little bit, because I have a big question about what she was up to and what she was like during those five, supposedly formative years.Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author is obviously serious-minded about her craft and she put in a lot of effort to write a book that told her story well, namely the story of an annoying, clueless and horny young woman trying to find happiness and repeatedly escaping danger and disaster. I didn't think this book had much new to say about living in a commune that was actually a cult, but it did tell that story well also.

Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman PDF
Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman EPub
Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman Doc
Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman iBooks
Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman rtf
Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman Mobipocket
Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman Kindle

Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman PDF

Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman PDF

Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman PDF

Mating in Captivity: A Memoir, by Helen Zuman PDF

Share on Google Plus

About Don Savage

This is a short description in the author block about the author. You edit it by entering text in the "Biographical Info" field in the user admin panel.