A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me: A Memoir

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A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me: A Memoir

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Overview

Jason Schmidt wasn't surprised when he came home one day during his junior year of high school and found his father, Mark, crawling around in a giant pool of blood. Things like that had been happening a lot since Mark had been diagnosed with HIV, three years earlier.

Jason's life with Mark was full of secrets—about drugs, crime, and sex. If the straights—people with normal lives—ever found out any of those secrets, the police would come. Jason's home would be torn apart. So the rule, since Jason had been in preschool, was never to tell the straights anything. A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me is a funny, disturbing memoir full of brutal insights and unexpected wit that explores the question: How do you find your moral center in a world that doesn't seem to have one?

A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me by Jason Schmidt is a gripping, heartbreaking young adult memoir.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250073723
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	01/05/2016
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	78,040
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)
Lexile:	890L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Jason Schmidt was born in Oregon in 1972. He has a law degree, and he lives with his family in Seattle, Washington.

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Editorial Reviews

“Schmidt's memoir is heartbreaking and touches the soul . . . Schmidt's brilliant prose will fascinate and appall teens and adults who read memoirs.” —VOYA
“A man whose emotionally unstable father moved him from home to home throughout the 1970s and '80s before dying of AIDS tells his story . . . Teens and adults who favor memoirs will be fascinated and deeply moved.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Schmidt’s memoir—which spans his childhood to late adolescence and chronicles his abuse and near homelessness at the hands of his drug-addicted gay father—is an emotionally demanding read.” —Publishers Weekly
“This title joins the ranks of harrowing true stories like Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It (1993) and Augusten Burrough's Running with Scissors (2002), compelling accounts of childhood despair that are painful to read and impossible to put down.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

11/03/2014
Schmidt’s memoir—which spans his childhood to late adolescence and chronicles his abuse and near homelessness at the hands of his drug-addicted gay father—is an emotionally demanding read. The memoir finds its strongest foothold in the primary relationship between father and son, particularly the wrenching scenes of Schmidt’s father’s rage and misguided devotion, packed between descriptions of a 1970s and ’80s West Coast counterculture childhood. As the author grows and begins to connect his own abusive actions and self-neglect to his childhood, the main relationship becomes buried in a jarring deflection of his father’s death from AIDS, the sudden adoption of a friendly volunteer as guardian, and overwrought details of his own burgeoning dating life, infused with Star Wars references (before his first kiss, Schmidt writes, “The best model I had for this kind of thing was Princess Leia and Han Solo at the end of The Empire Strikes Back”). If the turnaround moment for a teenage Schmidt arrives too late in the book to have the impact it might, the heavy burden of his early life is keenly felt. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary Management. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Schmidt’s memoir is heartbreaking and touches the soul. The title is appropriate, since, proverbially, what does not kill him does indeed make him stronger. Jason is three when his emotionally unstable father is arrested on drug charges in the early 1970s, so he lives briefly with his god-fearing, conservative grandparents. Dad is released on probation, and from then on, the tale of Jason and his father’s survival unfolds in terrifying, luminous detail. Dad is a hippie in the Pacific Northwest, complicated with drugs and communal living; Mom is long gone; and the relationship between father and son is abusive, neglectful, and unpredictable. Since his father seldom works, Jason is in and out of school as both try to fool the “straights,” those who live in middle-class, law-abiding stability. Along this treacherous journey, Dad has relationships with several men and develops HIV; in this era, the disease means death. Jason becomes his father’s caretaker, and this is not always out of love. The novel opens with the sixteen-year-old son finding his dad lying in a pool of his own blood in the kitchen. The flashback format outlines a story of abuse, betrayal, survival, and, eventually, hope. Although lengthy, Schmidt’s brilliant prose will fascinate and appall teens and adults who read memoirs. Reviewer: Judith Hayn; Ages 12 to 18.

VOYA, February 2015 (Vol. 37, No. 6) - Judith Hayn

05/01/2015
Gr 10 Up—In this disturbing, heartbreaking, and inspiring memoir, Schmidt provides an account of an unstable childhood and adolescence. The prologue begins with Schmidt at age 16, coming home to discover his father crawling around the floor, covered in blood. The author then pulls back, describing his early years. After Schmidt's parents separated, his father, Mark, took custody of him. The two moved from one decrepit home to the next in Seattle, as Mark abused and sold drugs, barely earning a living. Schmidt's voice will resonate with teens as he writes candidly about his father's negligence and abuse, adeptly capturing what it was like to grow up impoverished, the hostility he encountered at school, the injuries and illnesses he endured, his difficulty finding and keeping friends, and the challenges of adjusting to his gay father's unstable romantic and sexual life. As Schmidt grew older, he believed more and more that he and Mark could never become "straights," or normal people. When the author reached adolescence, during the early 1980s, Mark and many of his friends were diagnosed with AIDS. It was a period when many gay men were dying, when those with HIV faced stigma, and when the effectiveness of medical treatment was minimal. Once realizing his father's fate, Schmidt feared what the future had in store but was inspired to take control of his life. VERDICT This unflinchingly honest work is a strong choice for readers who appreciate unfiltered stories, can stomach gruesome details, or aspire to work in social services.—Jess Gafkowitz, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

2014-10-01
A man whose emotionally unstable father moved him from home to home throughout the 1970s and '80s before dying of AIDS tells his story.Schmidt was only 3 when his father was arrested on drug charges. In lucid, careful detail, he recalls being packed off to his grandparents'. He explains the drastic difference between their home and his return to life with his dad, exemplified by his father's reframing of the Christ story taught to young Schmidt by his conservative stepgrandmother: "That's a government lie. The truth is, Jesus was part alien." It's comical in this case, but the chasm that yawns between his dad's anti-mainstream ideals, which his son often finds sympathetic, and his neglect and unpredictable temper is a theme throughout. Matter-of-fact descriptions of horrific events—his father, while stoned, recalling how he once threw Jason's mother down a flight of stairs and later tried to kill himself, for example—allow the story to stand for itself, unmarred by melodrama. At bottom, this is an intensely personal narrative that meditates both on the writer's individual experience of abuse and the social issues at play in being the son of a gay father who becomes ill with HIV in its early days. Teens and adults who favor memoirs will be fascinated and deeply moved, when they get past the daunting page count. (Memoir. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

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