Mama Said: A Daughter’s Escape from the Alamo Christian Foundation
Autor Christhiaon Coieen Limba Engleză Paperback – 13 mai 2022
Christhiaon Coie grew up “Little Susie,” the daughter of Susan Alamo and stepdaughter of Tony Alamo, founders of the Alamo Christian Foundation. Coie continued to embrace the faith as she got older, but she was not a little girl anymore and began to realize that people don’t go to church and leave with the offering. She did not embrace the “faith” her mother was peddling, and she saw the financial grift that exploited the vulnerable followers. This is a story about the complex, unremitting relationship between a daughter and her abusive mother. Coie shares insight into Susan Alamo before her foundation days and reveals what it was like to grow up as her daughter between the 1950s and early 1970s. Across thirty-six chapters, she chronicles life within the Alamo cult and the twisted mother-daughter dynamic that persisted through it all. As Coie’s story unfolds, we see Little Susie transform into Christhiaon, navigating a manipulative mother and the distorted biblical teachings enlisted to her cause.
With a foreword from noted Alamo cult historian Debby Schriver, Coie’s gritty memoir is a true survivor story. What she survived, however, was not the cult only but the cruel double bind of what “mama said.”
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781621907305
ISBN-10: 1621907309
Pagini: 280
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 30 mm
Greutate: 0.42 kg
Ediția:1st Edition
Editura: University of Tennessee Press
Colecția Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN-10: 1621907309
Pagini: 280
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 30 mm
Greutate: 0.42 kg
Ediția:1st Edition
Editura: University of Tennessee Press
Colecția Univ Tennessee Press
Notă biografică
CHRISTHIAON COIE was born in Los Angeles, August 2, 1950. She’s the daughter of Soloman and Susan Lipowitz. In her early years she sang hymns for her mother as a guest in churches as well as backup vocals with record producers. Later she would sing on her own with studios and her own band.
ROB SCHRIVER develops training curriculum for the Oak Ridge National Lab. He is also a freelance writer and editor for the University of Tennessee Press and teaches at Pellissippi State Community College.
ROB SCHRIVER develops training curriculum for the Oak Ridge National Lab. He is also a freelance writer and editor for the University of Tennessee Press and teaches at Pellissippi State Community College.
Extras
Prologue
August 29, 1971
My trembling hands shoved some hair curlers into a box, and I looked around my tiny room for something, anything else I’d need. Thumping and shouts sounded from upstairs. I shouldn’t have told Mama I was leaving. I knew she’d send them after me.
My baby and my little girl started crying, jolting me back to lucidity: What the fuck will I need hair curlers for?
I dumped out the box and lied to my daughters that they’ll be all right. A truck grumbled to a stop in the gravel outside my basement apartment. Doors slammed and men’s voices barked. Mama’s voice sliced through the babble.
I froze.
Baby formula and diapers. I grabbed at them and my sweaty hands fumbled, my lit cigarette casting whirls of dancing smoke into the air.
Angry hands pounded against my door. I jumped and let out a quiet yelp.
“You open that door!” Mama screamed. My husband Ed, called out the same words, like an echo.
The box with the baby formula and diapers—it all seemed so excessive now. A waste of time. They were going to get me.
“She’s possessed by the devil!” Mama roared. “Don’t let the devil speak through her! Rebuke her!” Gruff voices barked and the pounding became battering.
“The blood of Jesus is against you, Satan!” Mama cried. “I’m not going to let you ruin those children’s lives. The Lord will tear you apart by the seams for this!”
I yelled back: “You’d better not come in! You’ll go to jail!”
Even if they could hear me over their own screams and the door’s crackling and splintering, they’d know that wasn’t true. I set the baby on the bed behind me. I told my little girl to get on the bed with her sister, but she was screaming and wouldn’t leave my side. I told her to get on the bed. She could get hurt standing next to me.
The door tore off of its hinges and six men stampeded into the room, Mama with them, screaming about Satan and demons. They grabbed at me and I snatched my baby up from the bed, shielding her with my body. I saw Ed’s face. His eyes were wild and empty. Their fists struck me like a hail of boulders.
“The Blood of Jesus is against you, Satan!” they shouted. “Get out of her, Satan!”
As the men beat me, Mama’s voice rose up in the violent sing-song of a fire-and-brimstone preacher. She circled the fray, invoking Jesus’ name and ordering the devil in me to return to hell. Her dainty, manicured hands ripped at my hair and tried to pry away my baby. I held on tight. “Give me that baby, you devil-possessed thing!” she cried.
My knees gave out. My hands went limp. The screaming infant slipped away into Mama’s grasp. I curled up and covered my head. Each sharp breath drew in hot air filled with my blood and the sweat of the men beating me. The pain soon faded into vague sensations of pressure. My mouth was full of blood. My mind retreated to some dream-like wilderness where I saw Daddy’s face. Daddy told me that swallowing blood makes you sick to your stomach, so I spat it out. Beyond the thuds of fists and shoes drumming against my skull, I was only faintly aware of my daughters’ fading screams.
August 29, 1971
My trembling hands shoved some hair curlers into a box, and I looked around my tiny room for something, anything else I’d need. Thumping and shouts sounded from upstairs. I shouldn’t have told Mama I was leaving. I knew she’d send them after me.
My baby and my little girl started crying, jolting me back to lucidity: What the fuck will I need hair curlers for?
I dumped out the box and lied to my daughters that they’ll be all right. A truck grumbled to a stop in the gravel outside my basement apartment. Doors slammed and men’s voices barked. Mama’s voice sliced through the babble.
I froze.
Baby formula and diapers. I grabbed at them and my sweaty hands fumbled, my lit cigarette casting whirls of dancing smoke into the air.
Angry hands pounded against my door. I jumped and let out a quiet yelp.
“You open that door!” Mama screamed. My husband Ed, called out the same words, like an echo.
The box with the baby formula and diapers—it all seemed so excessive now. A waste of time. They were going to get me.
“She’s possessed by the devil!” Mama roared. “Don’t let the devil speak through her! Rebuke her!” Gruff voices barked and the pounding became battering.
“The blood of Jesus is against you, Satan!” Mama cried. “I’m not going to let you ruin those children’s lives. The Lord will tear you apart by the seams for this!”
I yelled back: “You’d better not come in! You’ll go to jail!”
Even if they could hear me over their own screams and the door’s crackling and splintering, they’d know that wasn’t true. I set the baby on the bed behind me. I told my little girl to get on the bed with her sister, but she was screaming and wouldn’t leave my side. I told her to get on the bed. She could get hurt standing next to me.
The door tore off of its hinges and six men stampeded into the room, Mama with them, screaming about Satan and demons. They grabbed at me and I snatched my baby up from the bed, shielding her with my body. I saw Ed’s face. His eyes were wild and empty. Their fists struck me like a hail of boulders.
“The Blood of Jesus is against you, Satan!” they shouted. “Get out of her, Satan!”
As the men beat me, Mama’s voice rose up in the violent sing-song of a fire-and-brimstone preacher. She circled the fray, invoking Jesus’ name and ordering the devil in me to return to hell. Her dainty, manicured hands ripped at my hair and tried to pry away my baby. I held on tight. “Give me that baby, you devil-possessed thing!” she cried.
My knees gave out. My hands went limp. The screaming infant slipped away into Mama’s grasp. I curled up and covered my head. Each sharp breath drew in hot air filled with my blood and the sweat of the men beating me. The pain soon faded into vague sensations of pressure. My mouth was full of blood. My mind retreated to some dream-like wilderness where I saw Daddy’s face. Daddy told me that swallowing blood makes you sick to your stomach, so I spat it out. Beyond the thuds of fists and shoes drumming against my skull, I was only faintly aware of my daughters’ fading screams.
Recenzii
“Christhiaon Coie tells a harrowing story of being raised in, and finally escaping, a violent, anti-gay and anti-Catholic cult headed by a lowlife grifter by the name of Tony Alamo—and his long-time partner, Coie’s abusive mother. It’s a genuinely important account of a group that claims to hold high religious ideals, but at the end of the day is little more than an elaborate and oftentimes brutal swindle.” —Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right and former leader at the Southern Poverty Law Center
“Christhiaon Coie’s account of survival in the face of overwhelming psychological and physical abuse is riveting. Her subsequent quest for justice is an exhilarating testament to human decency.” —Tim Cahill, author of Jaguars Ripped My Flesh and Hold the Enlightenment
“Having known Chris for over thirty years, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard her say ‘Make a long story short,’ after which she would proceed to talk for twenty minutes. I’m glad that she didn’t make this story short. She has lived through some of the ugliest imaginable attacks from Alamo and his followers, in part, to prevent her from telling her truth. These stories serve as a warning to other cults, and to those who profit from them. They should have known that they couldn’t keep Chris quiet. Read the book. You’ll see what they were afraid of.” —Steven D. Archer, Partner, Kiesell Law LLP
“Christhiaon Coie’s account of survival in the face of overwhelming psychological and physical abuse is riveting. Her subsequent quest for justice is an exhilarating testament to human decency.” —Tim Cahill, author of Jaguars Ripped My Flesh and Hold the Enlightenment
“Having known Chris for over thirty years, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard her say ‘Make a long story short,’ after which she would proceed to talk for twenty minutes. I’m glad that she didn’t make this story short. She has lived through some of the ugliest imaginable attacks from Alamo and his followers, in part, to prevent her from telling her truth. These stories serve as a warning to other cults, and to those who profit from them. They should have known that they couldn’t keep Chris quiet. Read the book. You’ll see what they were afraid of.” —Steven D. Archer, Partner, Kiesell Law LLP