Book Review: On Becoming Me
Reviewed by Madeline Barbush
A heartwarming personal memoir on the beauty of growing pains
On Becoming Me: Memoir of an 80s Teenager is a compilation of Kirsten Hegberg Pursell's diary entries as a young girl who is slowly but surely entering womanhood.
Touching and emotional, this memoir graciously shows us the secret desires and thoughts of a teenager, exactly as they were written at the time. Her first entries are from 1977 when she was just ten years old and the final ones are dated to 1986.
We get to see a young woman mature and become closer to her true self here. It is a simple and sweet memoir that appeals greatly to young women and to those who have forgotten what it's like to grow up—how it is to feel the weight of everything big and small for the first time.
Kirsten includes not only her diary entries but also letters between friends and poetry she wrote when prose did not suffice. She stumbles through so many firsts, just like we all do. It is fun to immerse yourself in what is ordinarily a very private and sacrosanct space.
Naturally as she grows older, she goes from humorous worries like freaking out over her first French kiss to more mature dilemmas like analyzing an attachment to a boyfriend and figuring out how to manage overwhelming feelings of love and lust.
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