Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat
By: Patricia Williams, Jeannine Amber / Narrated By: Patricia Williams
Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
Tragic and funny with lots of explanations and excuses… so hmm…
Don’t get me wrong: I liked Rabbit and think it astounding that she survived pretty much the worst childhood I’ve ever heard of. Not a high school education amongst the extended family, no jobs other than thievery and welfare collections, everybody doing a stint in jail. And coming back up, getting a second chance, all whilst selling crack.
There’s the father of Rabbit’s two children: faithless and fertile beyond belief. There’s her mother: who’s shooting at the kids one minute, hiding Rabbit’s bags of crack for her the next. There’s her sister who was sexually abused by the same man at the same time, turning into a crack addict with four children who will be raised by Rabbit (who supports them by selling crack).
And the hero of the book, I think, is Michael, the man who came to her at the lowest time and lifted her up, supported her, believed in her.
But this isn’t a story of somebody pulling themselves up by the bootstraps through hard work and dedication. Rather, Rabbit/Patricia is an impulsive, short-tempered individual whose poverty made it impossible to see beyond her environment. She worked within the economy of the neighborhood; her initial relationship with a man was modeled solely after her mother’s relationships with men (which is an awful thing). I found that there were solid explanations for her choices, but along the way, there were people who stepped in to offer help, and her choices, even as she got way older, were poor.
So I dunno: Explanations vs. Excuses.
Still, I listened to this juuuuuust after finishing with Rachel Hollis’s new audiobook, Girl, Stop Apologizing with it’s focus on becoming a multi-millionaire; basically a book about white women, for white women (even though Hollis goes to great length to expound on the glory of multiculturalism). Both books are based on women born in less than desirable circumstances, rising up from all of it. But Rabbit, despite its depiction of Patricia, warts and all, shows a woman with great heart, a passionate desire to dream, a desire to install that in her children—soooo much different from the Hollis book.
I guess that’s what I ultimately came away with, even tho’ I’m doing some hemming and hawing: Rabbit did everything in her power to raise all those children she took care of to dream. Of something greater than their surroundings, of something greater than who she was herself. (Well, okay—she does involve some of the kids in drug dealing, soooo….)
A worthwhile look at what extreme poverty does to people; what being around addiction, violence, and mental illness does also. And hell! The woman became a comedienne, for gosh sake!
I applaud that, even though I squirmed.
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