Uncultured: A Memoir

by Daniella Mestyanek Young

Overview

"A painful and propulsive memoir delivered in the honest tones of a woman who didn’t always think she’d live to tell her story." —The New York Times

A Buzzfeed Best Book of September

In the vein of Educated and The Glass Castle, Daniella Mestyanek Young's Uncultured is more than a memoir about an exceptional upbringing, but about a woman who, no matter the lack of tools given to her, is determined to overcome.

Behind the tall, foreboding gates of a commune in Brazil, Daniella Mestyanek Young was raised in the religious cult The Children of God, also known as The Family, as the daughter of high-ranking members. Her great-grandmother donated land for one of The Family’s first communes in Texas. Her mother, at thirteen, was forced to marry the leader and served as his secretary for many years. Beholden to The Family’s strict rules, Daniella suffers physical, emotional, and sexual abuse—masked as godly discipline and divine love—and is forbidden from getting a traditional education.

At fifteen years old, fed up with The Family and determined to build a better and freer life for herself, Daniella escapes to Texas. There, she bravely enrolls herself in high school and excels, later graduating as valedictorian of her college class, then electing to join the military to begin a career as an intelligence officer, where she believes she will finally belong.

But she soon learns that her new world—surrounded by men on the sands of Afghanistan—looks remarkably similar to the one she desperately tried to leave behind.

Told in a beautiful, propulsive voice and with clear-eyed honesty, Uncultured explores the dangers unleashed when harmful group mentality goes unrecognized, and is emblematic of the many ways women have to contort themselves to survive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250280121
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	93,669
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

DANIELLA MESTYANEK YOUNG is an American author and speaker who was raised in the religious cult, Children of God. She later served as an intelligence officer for the US Army for over six years, making the rank of Captain, and became one of the first women in US Army history to conduct deliberate ground combat operations when she volunteered to serve on a Female Engagement Team. Daniella is also the recipient of the Presidential Volunteer Service Medal. Daniella lives with her husband and daughter in Maryland, and is a candidate for a Master’s degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the Harvard Extension School.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Prologue 1

Part I The Family

1 Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child 7

2 A Tale of Two Mommies 15

3 According to the Will of God 25

4 Anointing Them with Oil in the Name of the Lord 36

5 Heaven's Girl 46

6 A Handmaid's Tale 56

7 Bookworm 68

8 The End of the World as We Know It 75

9 All in The Family 85

10 The Promise of Paradise 90

11 Apocalypse Now 102

12 Coming to America 109

13 Babylon the Whore 119

14 Not Fit for the Kingdom of God 130

Part II The System

15 Dazed and Confused 147

16 Jesus Freaks 158

17 Bring Me to Life 168

Part III The Army

18 Drink the Kool-Aid 181

19 You're Not James Bond 204

20 Camp Followers 215

21 A Day Memorialized 232

22 Us Versus Them 245

23 Combat Barbie 256

24 I'm the Bitch 267

25 Take One for the Team 282

26 Running for My Life 304

27 Mr. President, We're Not Lesbians 318

Epilogue 331

Acknowledgments 337

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/25/2022

Mestyanek Young’s page-turning debut details her escape from the Children of God religious cult and her disillusionment after joining the U.S. Army. Born into the Children of God, the author endured relentless extreme hunger, as well as sexual and physical abuse at the hands of the “Uncles,” or predatory elder male cult members, throughout her childhood. “After fifteen years of... life in a religious prison camp,” she escaped, leaving behind her family and quickly discovering how ill-prepared she was for the outside world (“You don’t exist,” a secretary told Mestyanek Young when she first tried to enroll in public school as a teenager). The author landed a job at Chick-fil-A and finally got admitted to high school, where her guidance counselor encouraged her to dream big. Determined to prove her worth to the world, Mestyanek Young joined the Army but found it to be another institution in which powerful men asserted control over her and the threat of sexual violence was omnipresent. In Afghanistan, she contended with the horrors of war alongside discrimination, isolation, and sexual assault. Mestyanek Young searingly captures the fear and intensity that were her constant companions in the Children of God, and she draws smart parallels between the dogmatic “indoctrination” she encountered in both the cult and the Army, observing that “wherever there is programming, the code can be written wrong.” Readers won’t be able to put down this harrowing and enthralling memoir. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"A tremendous story of grit and determination."

—Julia Scheeres, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus Land

"A painful and propulsive memoir delivered in the honest tones of a woman who didn’t always think she’d live to tell her story." —The New York Times

"Mestyanek Young searingly captures the fear and intensity that were her constant companions in the Children of God, and she draws smart parallels between the dogmatic 'indoctrination' she encountered in both the cult and the Army . . . Readers won’t be able to put down this harrowing and enthralling memoir."

—Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Affecting … and a deft portrait of the dangers of blindly following leaders of whatever stripe.” —Kirkus Reviews

"Unflinching and powerful . . . a story of resilience and survival that will stay with you long after you finish." —Buzzfeed

“Uncultured vividly cautions readers to choose a group in which you can be yourself—and be free.” —Bookpage (starred)

"A riveting and heroic memoir that not only brings the reader into unchartered, horrific territories but also draws important correlations between two (seemingly different) worlds. Daniella’s harrowing journey is a gift to us all as we observe the parallels and, in the process, have a deeper understanding of how abuses of power can operate and toxically spiral in any group. A must read!"

—Sarah Edmondson, author of Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult That Bound My Life

From the Publisher

★ 12/01/2022

Mestyanek Young's piercing debut details her unique and trauma-filled life. Narrating her own story, Mestyanek Young recounts her time growing up in the Children of God cult. She is a daughter of the original "family" and is fierce and bold, but none of that protects her. While not explicitly graphic, her recollections are difficult to listen to, particularly when she discusses the sexual abuse of children. In the second half of the book, and perhaps the second chapter of her life, she writes about her experiences as a woman in the U.S. military, which was marked with disillusionment and fear. After escaping the Children of God, she became highly attuned to controlling behavior, a perspective that allowed her to draw uncomfortable parallels between the cult and the military. Nonetheless, she has an impressive military career that she is proud of, as well as important relationships that grew out of her military service. VERDICT Although this is Mestyanek Young's first time narrating, listeners will appreciate hearing this deeply personal story told by the author herself. Share with fans of Tara Westover's Educated and Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox. Memoir readers will want to check this one out.—Laura Stein

Library Journal - Audio

2022-08-03
Goal-oriented, driven, and often betrayed, the author recounts time spent in the twin cults of centrifugal Christianity and the American military.

“The first rule of cults is you are never in a cult,” writes Mestyanek Young, who grew up in the communal world of the Children of God, led by a self-styled prophet who gathered a group of young followers whom he thought of “as sheep, in need of a shepherd.” Moving from country to country—Brazil, Mexico, Japan—a step ahead of the authorities, the group, as described by the author, was both strict in discipline and extremely free-wheeling in matters of sex, especially sex with minors. As a young teenager, the author broke free, attended college, and married at 21, briefly settling into a relationship that was problematic even years after her divorce. She also joined the U.S. Army, which had many of the cultish ingredients of her youth, especially the view that “as a woman, you’re either a bitch, a slut, or a dyke.” Even so, and despite her revulsion at superior officers’ defense of torture, Mestyanek Young excelled in leadership skills, working in intelligence in Afghanistan. “I was sure I could be a part of the army but not owned by it, that a person could have brains and independent, innovative thoughts” she writes, quickly adding, “I was wrong.” When she ran afoul of the command structure, her career ground to a halt. The author recounts her story in a series of episodes that become repetitive in the reading even as it’s clear that she was treated unjustly, at least by civilian standards. In the end, her message is compelling: A cult is a cult, she writes, and being a member makes it easy “to hate, harm, even kill because we are the good guys.”

Affecting, if a touch long, and a deft portrait of the dangers of blindly following leaders of whatever stripe.

Kirkus Reviews