ANNIE'S GHOSTS: A Journey into a Family Secret
Steve Luxenberg
Hyperion
Memoir
ISBN: 9781401322472
Steve Luxenberg was a grown man, with a family of his own, when he learned that his mother had been hiding a terrible secret all of his life and most of hers. In a conversation with her therapist, Beth mentioned she had a sister who died long ago. Her adult children didn't think too much about it; after all, she was nearly 80 years old and in failing health, and they had more important things to deal with. But less than a year after Beth's death, this mysterious, kept-secret sister came up again. This time, Luxenberg decided to find out if she really existed and what became of her.
ANNIE'S GHOSTS recounts Luxenberg's search for the aunt he never knew he had. In trying to find out what he could about Annie Cohen, he learns a great deal about his family, especially his parents, and is challenged by the realities of mental health, social pressures, and the history of violence and oppression that culminated in the Holocaust. All of these factors, and several more, contribute to Annie being kept a secret for decades and the tension just below the surface of the Cohen-Luxenberg family.
Beth was, famously, an only child. It was something she would tell people within moments of meeting them. As her son learned, however, this was far from the truth. Beth's younger sister, Annie, had been born with a deformed leg, and as she grew, it seemed she had some learning disabilities. But in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, when Beth was growing up, her sister was called “crippled” and “retarded,” and after a frightening encounter (possibly even an attack), the already mentally and physically fragile Annie took a turn for the worse.
By turns catatonic and furious, Annie was eventually institutionalized by her family. And, as Luxenberg demonstrates with his fascinating and horrifying exploration of the asylum system in the U.S., if Annie wasn't severely mentally ill when she entered the hospitals in which she was to spend the rest of her life, she was after just a short period of time. And over time, she became more and more isolated in the hospital, visited only occasionally by her mother --- never by her father or her sister. In fact, Beth took the opportunity provided by this absence to recreate her own biography, trying to erase all evidence of Annie's life.
ANNIE'S GHOSTS is an intense book. Part memoir, part history and part cultural study, it examines many branches of Luxenberg's family tree and paints a vivid picture of American society and immigrant society in the early decades of the 20th century as well as the dismal state of mental health care until very recently. Luxenberg, true to his journalistic background, excels at research and following leads, and for the most part his tale his tightly woven. There are, however, a few threads that are dropped and some truths he never fully divulges out of respect for his late mother and others he knows. Still, these are only minor distractions.
There is really no happy ending to ANNIE'S GHOSTS, but it is a story worth telling and worth reading. As Luxenberg discovered, his family secret is not an uncommon one. Many American families have secret members, hidden away, forgotten, despised or feared. In telling Annie's story, the story of his mother, and the story of his path to discovery and attempts at understanding, Luxenberg brings to life what otherwise could seem like an extreme or isolated situation.
Readable and compelling, emotional and just plain interesting, ANNIE'S GHOSTS is a tragic family saga that pushes the narrator to examine his role as a son versus that of a writer and asks readers to find some sympathy and understanding for a family damaged by secrets and lies, and yet still bound by love and hope.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
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