Beat

My Journey Through Abuse and the Holdeman Mennonites

By: Hannah Prosser

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

I was born to an abusive doctor named Ahaz in Kentucky, homeschooled and not even allowed to have friends. When I was nine, Ahaz discovered The Church of God in Christ, Mennonite (Holdeman) in Tennessee, and he forced us to move there.
The Holdeman's were religious exempt from education beyond the eighth grade, and I was beat for begging to go to a high school.
As a minor, I had to kiss approximately 200 different people on the lips, some of whom were complete strangers, for the sake of something called The Holy Kiss; only it didn't feel holy.
Ahaz determined to break my independent, inquisitive nature through severe beatings and worse, including deadbolting me within my bedroom and nailing my windows shut.
Multiple Holdeman Mennonites were aware of what was being done to me, yet no one reported it. Instead, I was made out to be mentally ill; a liar.
After years of suffering through emotional, physical, physiological and sexual abuse, how could I even survive?
No one could hear me then... will YOU hear me now?

Terrible childhood

This book was very repetitive. I’m guessing that the author was just trying to drive home the awful life that she was forced to live. She was failed by so many over the years. The true villain in the story is her mother. I cannot imagine having an out and not using it to protect my children. Absolutely disgusting. Also, I do believe that a 3rd grader could have read this book better than AI did.

AI

This is a very inspiring story and I really enjoyed it! But having AI read it really took me out of the story, because of the mispronunciation of certain words and it wasn’t like actual hard words it was like breath.

Reader mid read too many words over and over.

Reader doesn’t sound natural and mis pronounced the same words wrong, over and over. Story is one of concern.

Raw truth

As a survivor myself, my heart broke for her. "normal" is a setting on the washing machine. Much love to the author!

The AI reader was fairly good, but mispronounced words got a bit annoying

An unbreakable spirit.

Hannah wrote a very difficult to read telling of the physical, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse she endured through her childhood and adolescent years. I had to pause the audio book several times to take breaks, sometimes for a day or more.

I’ve read some of the other reviews on the print version complaining of the grammatical and continuity errors in this memoir, but I see it as evidence of the story’s validity. It was structured as if it were written by someone with a minimal 8th grade cult education. A limited understanding of the lexicon reflects that of someone raised in a community with an isolated dialect, such as the Holdeman Mennonites.

The continuity errors (of which I admit there were many. For example: she described a hope chest and it’s purpose for what seemed like a half-dozen times) are exactly what you would expect from someone attempting to record horrid and terrible memories that are being dredged up from suppression and relived. The re-traumatizing would cause anyone to have to stop writing for extended periods between chapters, and forget they had already described a particular subject. This isn’t a story written for entertainment. This is a damaged human being sharing the worst and most shameful moments of her life, shouting, “this happened to me! Is there anyone who will listen and care?!”

I don’t understand how anyone can be so heartless as to read this book and not have enough empathy to be both heartbroken and proud of Hannah for the battles she has survived. However, the monsters and devils contained within this narrative are evidence of the contrary.

Hannah is a warrior. The evidence is shown in her bravery to publish this memoir.