It seems to be clear that all people are different, and that’s good. But when those closest to us do not correspond to our ideas of what is right and beautiful, then we are overwhelmed with anger, shame and a desperate desire to re-educate them.
Two very different confessions are just about this: why we are ashamed of those closest to us. The first was written by the American journalist Jeannette Walls about her parents, convinced vagabonds and unmercenaries. Making a successful career, Jeannette Walls is afraid: what if colleagues find out that her mother is rummaging through garbage cans?
In the second special correspondent of The New Times, Sergei Khazov-Kassia from Leningrad, talks about a boy who, throughout his lonely childhood in the 1980s and 1990s, is trying to realize his homosexuality, and his mother rejects him. And there is no other way out but to return to the past and try to accept it — and yourself, and all the participants in the events — as they were and remain, without anger, condemnation and desire to correct. In the end, everyone has the right to live their life the way they want. And each of us also has the right to refuse to bear someone else’s responsibility.
D. Walls «Castle of Glass».
Translation from English by Alexey Andreev.
Eksmo, 416 p.
S. Khazov-Kassia «Another Childhood».
KOLONNA Publications, 388 p.