Books

Neglected But Undefeated 

This book is surprising, dramatic, unbelievable, heartbreaking expressions said and done. One young man going through trials and tribulations, feeling unloved, unwanted, never needed, and unexpected, from a lady that he had finally understood was his true mother. The one he was told loved him the most in the world no matter what she does and says to him. Growing up and feeling like there was and cannot be any future and purpose for him because he felt and was being told that he could die and day to come. For reasons of that he couldn't control his feelings and seizures that were occurring because of the hatred he felt towards him from the one that loved him the most in this world.

Book Reviews 

Neglected but Undefeated is a tear-jerking story about abuse, neglect, and healing! A young child wakes up one morning on the laundry room floor in his home. He's completely bruise from head to toe and can't remember how he ended up sleeping there. Awaken by the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen, he eagerly stands up and walks into the other room and greets his mother who's in the middle of cooking his favorite breakfast. Soon what starts out as a simple, Good morning mom, quickly escalates into a verbal tug-of-war. Suddenly the child's mother begins to beat him with the hot frying pan she was previously using to cook the eggs in. After beating him with the pan, she then grabs a high heel shoe to finish the job she already started on his defenseless little body. Afterwards, she unplugs all the phone and walks out of the house, leaving him curdle up in pain on the kitchen floor. This is just one of the many tragic stories of Jonathan Burkett's childhood growing up with a mother who didn't love him, a step-father who turned a blind eye to the excessive abuse and neglect, and the sexual molestation by the adult females in his life who he thought he could trust. As a child, all young Jonathan wanted was his mother's love and attention. But in return, all he received was beatings and death threats. Around the age of fourteen, his mother threw him out of the house and with no place to go, he became homeless. One day, he sat his mother down and asked her if she loved him. His mother replied only sent him further down a spiraling hole of depression and uncontrollable rage. However, as Jonathan tries to piece his young adult life together, he encounter people who attempts to uplift and support him through his troubling times. But will the pain from his childhood destroy any chance for a happy future? --Joy Farrington, The Book Club Expert

Born in 1987, Jonathan Anthony Burkett has lived a young life that reads like fiction: vicious beatings by his mother, a mental breakdown in elementary school, homelessness, seizures and hallucinations from a brain disorder brought on by stress and anxiety, and finally brain surgery that would either help him or kill him. This is a story about my life as a young man going through many struggles. ...Finding myself at the early age of fourteen, sleeping on the streets, in cars, and parks, with a broken heart and mind because of the life I was living. Neglected but Undefeated is a heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful memoir of a young life full of bad times. There have been so many wrong routes that I've taken in my existence because of the confusion and neglect that my mother has shown, because she saw another man when she looked at me. ...I need to let it all out to be able to move toward a better life like my psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, counselors, and the ladies in my anger management classes told me. Born in Florida, Burkett lived with his grandparents in Jamaica, where he had a happy childhood until he moved back to the states at six to live with his mother and father . That s when his mother savagely and routinely beat him because she hated his real father, who had raped her. Burkett s litany of his mother s severe and constant beatings, her attacks on him with a knife, and verbal abuse are harrowing, and at times, relentless. I wanted to shake him for not defending himself until I remembered that this is a boy who only wanted his mother s love and put up with the unimaginable trying to get it. In 2005, alone, defeated and discouraged, Burkett prepares for brain surgery, not quite sure if he even wants to survive. He is aided by Marise, a worker at the hospital and by the knowledge that the surgery could change his life, if he survives it. When he does, and the surgery is successful he decides that despite the trials and tribulations he had faced and would face he ll never give up. He turns to writing to understand his feelings about his mother, and it changes him in ways that he never expected, allowing him to forgive her and come to terms with his life. This evocative story fully illustrates the W. Somerset Maugham quote that all writers eventually come to know, We don t write because we want to; we write because we have to. Burkett s memoir poses the questions: How do you keep going when you have nothing left? How do you find courage when you are all alone? How do you love yourself when your own mother doesn't love you? Though this is not the most eloquent, or well-written story, and the poems often intrude in the narrative, this does not fully diminish its impact. If you appreciate stories of survival, hope and ultimately empowerment, Neglected but Undefeated will not disappoint you. It might even give you reason to count your blessings. --Book Reviewed by Carol Taylor, AALBC