NOSHA's Banned Books Club - Jesus Land: A Memoir (2019) by Julia Scheeres

A poignant account of two siblings—one white, one Black—growing up in the Christian fundamentalist communities of Indiana and the Dominican Republic.

A New York Times bestseller: A memoir that “will break your heart and mend it again, but it won’t stop haunting you” (Entertainment Weekly).

Julia and her adopted brother, David, are 16 years old. Julia is white. David is black. It’s the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother, more involved with her church’s missionaries than her own children, and a violent father.

'When they start to crack (or fight back), they are packed off to Escuela Caribe, a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic, characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. Julia and David strive to make it through these ordeals and their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and wry humor.

Jesus Land is a gripping tale of rage and redemption, hope and humor, morality and malice—and most of all, the truth: that being a good person takes more than just going to church.

Challenged for: nudity, obscene sexual activities, incest, underage alcohol abuse, profanity