{"id":4275,"date":"2023-03-26T22:56:10","date_gmt":"2023-03-26T22:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/meredithcummings\/?p=4275"},"modified":"2023-09-23T00:43:48","modified_gmt":"2023-09-23T00:43:48","slug":"review-where-faith-and-celebrity-meet-what-does-real-freedom-look-like-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/meredithcummings\/2023\/03\/26\/review-where-faith-and-celebrity-meet-what-does-real-freedom-look-like-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Where faith and ce\u00adleb\u00adrity meet, what does real free\u00addom look like?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This review first appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette March 26, 2023.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BECOMING FREE INDEED: MY STORY OF DISENGAGING FAITH FROM FEAR\u201d<\/strong> By Jinger Duggar Vuolo, Thomas Nelson ($29.99)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Jinger Duggar Vuolo was 14, her private diary was listed on eBay for $100,000 by someone who stole it. Someone coveted money for irretrievable words that were only in her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The girl who took it during a visit to Ms. Vuolo\u2019s home returned it a few weeks later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I read it today, I\u2019m struck by what is missing,\u201d she writes in \u201cBecoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear,\u201d her new memoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was afraid to say the wrong thing, to confess my inner desires, even in a diary. I didn\u2019t express any of the feelings and fears that were a constant part of my childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 10, she experienced her TV debut as the daughter of Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar on the wildly popular TLC show \u201c19 Kids and Counting,\u201d and later \u201cCounting On.\u201d She remained on television until she was 27, after a combined 21 seasons of reality television. She grew up in the little black box that is TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her book reflects another box she grew up in: The restrictive and perverse interpretation of the Bible from her youth, based on the teachings of Bill Gothard, founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which enforced meticulous, strict and often misogynistic rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How a reader receives this book will depend on if they have ever seen Ms. Vuolo on TV, as well as their experience with, or without, religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike the recent memoir \u201cSpare,\u201d Prince Harry\u2019s middle-finger memoir to the monarchy, or the actress Jenette McCurdy\u2019s brutally transparent \u201cI\u2019m Glad My Mom Died,\u201d this book is a reexamination of Ms. Vuolo\u2019s life, not a renouncement of it or her family. While she has rejected the teachings of Mr. Gothard, her parents and some siblings have not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reader witnesses Ms. Vuolo walk the tightrope of her own feelings and emotions, teetering between her close family and her own beliefs. At times her froideur toward her family is on blast, and other times that coolness hums in the background like the murmur of a congregation reciting Bible verses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Vuolo finds herself disentangling that very word, \u201cdisentanglement,\u201d which she prefers to use instead of \u201cdeconstruction\u201d \u2014 a loaded term in some Christian communities that can mean various things depending on which church and individual defines it. The book takes the reader on her journey as she distinguishes the faith she was taught from her present-day interpretation of the Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy faith has changed dramatically,\u201d she writes early in the book. \u201cAnd that should be enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Vuolo, 29, the sixth child in her family, has two daughters. She writes that she is determined to raise them out of the spotlight \u2014 but doesn\u2019t hesitate to name them. When her own TV show came to an end, Ms. Vuolo had to adjust. She\u2019s still adjusting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI could hardly remember what it was like to not be on television,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She tackles what she thinks of as freedom during the course of the book with childlike honesty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut along my journey of disentanglement, I\u2019ve come to see that unfettered freedom does not produce the good life,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIn the end it often leads to more bondage. Why? Because it puts me in charge of my life, and I am not the best judge of what is best for me. If given limitless options and the responsibility of figuring out what is going to make me truly happy, I struggle to commit to anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, this book reads like a term paper or English essay called \u201cWhy I Deserve to be Happy,\u201d complete with a laundry list of facts rather than the more complicated portrait it could have painted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The writing is stilted and unconsuming. Ms. Vuolo, author of two previous books, including the New York Times best-selling \u201cGrowing Up Duggar,\u201d which she wrote with her three sisters, enlisted Corey Williams as a ghostwriter for this book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, overall she gets her point across as she struggles with what it means to be a former child reality TV star, a wife, a Christian, a mother and a woman in the world. This book \u2014 for better or worse \u2014 feels like a long public justification for its author to live the happy, free life she has built for herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She, like all of us, should<\/em> be happy and free \u2014 indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This review first appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette March 26, 2023. BECOMING FREE INDEED: MY STORY OF DISENGAGING FAITH FROM FEAR\u201d By Jinger Duggar Vuolo, Thomas Nelson ($29.99) When Jinger Duggar Vuolo was 14, her private diary was listed on eBay for $100,000 by someone who stole it. Someone coveted money for irretrievable words that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[293],"tags":[300,296,290],"class_list":["post-4275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-memoir","tag-non-fiction","tag-pittsburgh-post-gazette"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nReview: Where faith and ce\u00adleb\u00adrity meet, what does real free\u00addom look like? » Meredith Cummings: Journalist, Educator, Nonprofit Director<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Review: Where faith and ce\u00adleb\u00adrity meet, what does real free\u00addom look like? » Meredith Cummings: Journalist, Educator, Nonprofit Director\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This review first appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette March 26, 2023. 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