Military Brats
4/5
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About this ebook
A startling, groundbreaking exploration, Military Brats is the first book to analyze what it means to grow up in the military. Based on five years of research, including in-depth interviews with eighty military brats from all the armed services as well as physicians, teachers, psychologists, social workers, and others, this book probes the consequences—both positive and negative—of being raised in a family characterized by rigid discipline, nomadic rootlessness, dedication to military mission, and the threat of war and personal loss.
With its clear-eyed, sometimes shocking depictions of alcoholism and domestic violence, and its empathy for military parents caught up in an extremely demanding way of life, Military Brats provides catharsis, insight, and a path toward healing. Mary Wertsch not only defines America’s most invisible minority for the very first time, she also passionately exhorts the children of warriors to come to terms with their native Fortress legacies so that they might take full advantage of the positive endowment that is also their birthright.
Civilians will find this book eye-opening. Military parents will find it at once challenging and sympathetic. And military brats will know in their hearts that this is the book they’ve been waiting for.
Mary Edwards Wertsch
Mary Edwards Wertsch is the author of the 1991 non-fiction book, Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress. The outcome of five years of intensive research, the book closely examines the experience of military brats, describing the patterns of shared experience in childhood and tying these to their psychological legacies, positive and negative, in adult life. Wertsch draws on the body of published military family research, adds her own findings, and interweaves the life stories of her military brat interviewees, which are inspiring, heart-wrenching, and, to her military brat readers, eye-opening in their familiarity. The result, in effect, is a book which discovers and names a culture that had previously been below the societal radar.A military brat herself, Wertsch was born in 1951 to a Southern mother and a West Pointer father (class of 1936) who served 30 years in the Army Infantry. In the course of her childhood she attended 12 schools and lived in 20 houses. She spent two years in Germany and three in France, during which she attended a French public school. In 1973 Wertsch graduated from The College of William and Mary with a degree in philosophy. She worked as an investigative reporter and feature writer before writing Military Brats. She is married and lives in St. Louis with her husband and their two sons, and in addition to writing now also teaches poetry-writing to inner city elementary school children. She is one of the founders of Operation Footlocker, which travels the country from gathering to gathering of military brats, seeking to unite them in the recognition of their common heritage.
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Reviews for Military Brats
10 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Being a military brat myself, I absolutely loved this book. Before I read this book, I thought that my life experiences were unique (different from those I knew when I lived offbase). The book made me realize that I am part of a big family of military brats all over the world. I was shocked at how well the author described my life. Recommended reading for any military brat, especially those that grew up in the military during the 60's.