Dyuthi's Reviews > The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing

A super quick and easy read. Maybe because I've binged stuff like Girls Incarcerated and Jailbirds on Netflix, her story wasn't eye opening or anything.

I didn't feel like it was hard hitting, and I blame that on the narration. A whole lot of "first this thing happened, and then this happened. I thought about it. I meditated. And finally when I thought I had it all together another thing happened. " You know?

We don't get a lot of information about what her life was like before her drug habit. References to her previous relationships and lifestyle are made as offhand remarks or maybe a paragraph if we're lucky, so I still haven't gotten an idea about her as a person. Her experiences in jail that have led to her writing this aren't special, and I was looking for something that would actually help me understand why these experiences made the impact on her they did. Sure, yeah, traumatizing things, but there was no avenue for me to really put myself in her shoes and empathize throughout her narration.

I've definitely read newspaper articles that do a better job of creating interest and curiosity in the reader.