It just arrived!

by ozziepost 14 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  ozziepost

  Thanks to Amazon.com (where would we be without those guys?) I've just received my copy of the new book "Awakening of a Jehovah's Witness" by Dianne Wilson (published by Prometheus Books, 2002).

  The dust jacket carries these words: "Her engrossing first-hand account will be of great interest to former Witnesses, students of cult phenomena, anyone who has ever experienced an abusive relationship, those who want to learn more about what compels people to enter this group, and all who have everhad contact with Jehovah's Witnesses."

  It looks like a good read, all 327 pages of it, just going by the table of contents. Just look at some of these topics:

  The Rubber Band Cycle (chapter 8)
  Leaving the Guidebook Behing (chapter 14)
  The Shoe Fits: A Cultlike Organisation (chapter 16) I'm especially interested in this chapetr.
  Playing Follow-the-Leader: Zigzagging Doctrines That Affect Lives (chapter 18)
  Codependency Held Me Hostage (chapter 20)

  Oh, and there's an Index, too. I'm always impressed by a book that includes an index!

  I reckon Mrs Ozzie and I'll be fighting over who gets to read this first! Perhaps I should've got 2 copies!

  Trouble is, it could make keeping up-to-date with our world wide board here a bit difficult!!

  Cheers,
  Ozzie

  "If our hopes for peace are placed in the hands of imperfect people, they are bound to evaporate."

  
  - Ron Hutchcraft Surviving the Storms of Stress
• 

  Beck_Melbourne

  Priorities Oz!!

  Post first...book later! :o))

  Beck
• 

  morrisamb

  I am definitely interested in getting this book as I have read only one other professional book about a Jehovah's Witness: It's called Jim, My life with Aids; written by June Callwood (Canada).
  Could you post where I could exactly order this book?
  I am interested because my book will be coming out probably within two months and it definitely discusses my life as a Witness: It's called Father's Touch (www.fatherstouch.com)
  Thanks for any info. you can post.
• 

  ozziepost

  G'day morrisamb,

  Do what I did; go to www.amazon.com

  I always find very good and speedy service from them. Why, they even get items to me in the Great Soouthern Land within a week or so.

  Cheers,
  Ozzie

  "If our hopes for peace are placed in the hands of imperfect people, they are bound to evaporate."

  
  - Ron Hutchcraft Surviving the Storms of Stress
• 

  dedalus

  * http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1573929425/ref=cm_mp_wli_/102-1720705-0196109?coliid=I2K5C6UVTEJKFP

  I thought the review from Publisher's Weekly was interesting:

  "The public needs to be warned," says ex-Jehovah's Witness Diane Wilson about the religion she once embraced. In Awakening of a Jehovah's Witness: Escape from the Watchtower Society, Wilson recounts her quarter-century in the movement, making the usual case that the Society is a cult, that it exercises unhealthy control over the minds and behavior of its members and that it grooms followers to become victims. Certainly, her story is sad, particularly the part about being encouraged to shun her own daughter for several months, but it is hardly a balanced or even very perceptive book. (One of the most interesting elements of the narrative is that Wilson seems to have transferred the near-divine authority that she once vested in her church to her therapist, whose words are sometimes reprinted here in boldface.) Sadly, few objective accounts exist about the Jehovah's Witnesses; little stands in the middle between polemic and apologetic. Readers are left with classic studies such as M. James Penton's Apocalypse Delayed, a rare book that seeks not just to discredit and refute the Watchtower, but to understand it.

  I have to say, though I haven't read the book myself (yet), I find the review remarkably perceptive -- not to get too uppity about it, but I'm beginning to find the whole debate about whether Witnesses are or aren't part of a cult to be somewhat reductive. I wonder how much of the book actually revolves around this.

  And chapter titles like "Codependency Held Me Hostage" make me cringe. But, like I said, I haven't read the book.

  Dedalus
• 

  ladonna

  Ozzie,

  To even ATTEMPT to read the book before Mrs Ozzie, tells me HOW much of a NUTTER you really are!!!!

  You win the "nutter" award for 2002 right now!!!!!

  Ana...of the never misses a chance, class

  
  Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.
  —Ralph Waldo Emerson
• 

  morrisamb

  Thank you Ozzie, and dedalus, cringe is right. Let us know what you think after you've read it Ozzie, please and thanks.
• 

  clash_city_rockers

  sounds like a good book

  Does anyone here have info on the cult Unification church "moonies"?
• 

  refiners fire

  http://www.tparents.org
  Thats their website.
  http://www.rickross.com
  he will have a link that will give you an anti moonie view.
  Rick Ross is a good cult resource all around actually.
  http://www.rickross.com/sg_bible.html
  Links to just about every cult under the sun right there.
• 

  ozziepost

  Well, I've read the first three chapters!

  I already know the hero. Yes, you got it right, dedalus, you wise old thing, it's the therapist!

  Actually I'm finding the writing style a tad irritating. It's in the style of a kid recounting a story, rather breathlessly, with "and then..., and then.....," etc. Rather staccato, not a bit somnolent like James Penton's tome! Still, for me, nothing can go past Ray Franz's COC and ISOCF.

  Nevertheless, Diane Wilson's book is very useful for seeing how things are in the borg from a woman's persepective.

  Cheers,
  Ozzie

  "If our hopes for peace are placed in the hands of imperfect people, they are bound to evaporate."

  
  - Ron Hutchcraft Surviving the Storms of Stress