Angela Yarber, award-winning author of Queering the American Dream 'Page-turner is an understatement for Daniella Mestyanek Young's Uncultured, a gripping memoir of resilience, courage, grief, and the hope that comes when a woman knows her true worth.' Julia Scheeres, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus Land

“A tremendous story of grit and determination.' “Affecting … and a deft portrait of the dangers of blindly following leaders of whatever stripe.” -Kirkus Review 'It’s a pleasure to read something so riveting that also has so much to say.' -The Linden Review 'Mestyanek Young searingly captures the fear and intensity that were her constant companions in the Children of God, and she draws smart parallels between the dogmatic “indoctrination” she encountered in both the cult and the Army, observing that “wherever there is programming, the code can be written wrong.” Readers won’t be able to put down this harrowing and enthralling memoir.” - Publisher’s Weekly STARRED Review There, she bravely enrolls herself in high school and excels, later graduating as valedictorian of her college class, then electing to join the military to begin a career as an intelligence officer, where she believes she will finally belong.īut she soon learns that her new world-surrounded by men on the sands of Afghanistan-looks remarkably similar to the one she desperately tried to leave behind. Beholden to The Family’s strict rules, Daniella suffers physical, emotional, and sexual abuse-masked as godly discipline and divine love-and is forbidden from getting a traditional education.Īt fifteen years old, fed up with The Family and determined to build a better and freer life for herself, Daniella escapes to Texas. Her mother, at thirteen, was forced to marry the leader and served as his secretary for many years.

Her great-grandmother donated land for one of The Family’s first communes in Texas. Told in a beautiful, propulsive voice and with clear-eyed honesty, Uncultured explores the dangers unleashed when harmful group mentality goes unrecognized, and is emblematic of the many ways women have to contort themselves to survive.īehind the tall, foreboding gates of a commune in Brazil, Daniella Mestyanek Young was raised in the religious cult The Children of God, also known as The Family, as the daughter of high-ranking members.

In the vein of Educated and The Glass Castle, Uncultured is more than a memoir about an exceptional upbringing, but about a woman who, no matter the lack of tools given to her, is determined to overcome.

“A painful and propulsive memoir delivered in the honest tones of a woman who didn’t always think she’d live to tell her story.' ―The New York Times

Uncultured daniella mestyanek young