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INTERVIEWS

  • New, October '09! A video interview with Laura Flanders and GritTV

  • New, October '09! An audio interview on The Dr. Pat Show

  • June 20: The Page 99 Test

  • June 1: Failure Magazine

  • April 22: The Rude Awakening Show: 4/22/09 - Interview starts at 8:20

  • April 8 Galleycat: An Unlikely Disciple Meets an Ex-Jehovah's Witness

  • April 7 Providence Journal: Playful approach lightens account of growing up as a Jehovah's Witness

  • Hipster Book Club, by Marie Mundaca

  • Girl W/Pen, by Allison McCarthy

  • The Comedians, by Maria Ciampa

  • Funny Grown Here, by Nick Zaino

  • Guest Blogger on Powells.com





    • PRAISE

    "The funniest book I've ever read by a disfellowshipped Jehovah's Witness from Pawtucket. Very funny. Very, very funny. Very, very, very funny." -- Janeane Garofalo

    "This acerbic, witty memoir chronicles the first 23 years of Abraham's life with candor and a good dose of comedy." -- Publishers Weekly

    "What Kyria Abrahams says is serious, but how she says it is funny: I'm Perfect, You're Doomed."
    -- Bryan Rourke, Providence Journal (full review)

    "Ms. Abrahams has written the funnier memoir, Mr. Queenan the better one." -- An odd, backhanded compliment from The Washington Times, comparing my book to Joe Queenan's Closing Time (full review)

    "A natural writer whose prose flows effortlessly as she easily mixes throwaway humor and painful memories in a compelling narrative." -- Booklist, starred review

    "Undoubtedly the cleverest lapsed Jehovah's Witness yet, Abrahams offers a graphic, mordant, wickedly distaff take on her life." -- Kirkus (full review)

    "Abrahams painstakingly demonstrates how Witnesses manipulate members into abject fear of life beyond Kingdom Hall... This makes Abrahams' book especially important." -- The Feminist Review (full review)

    "Abrahams tackles her story with deft humor and her comedy is enhanced by just how humorless her life has been. " -- BUST magazine (page scan)

    "What could have been cliched or maudlin is hilarious in her hands" -- Penthouse (view page scan)

    "Hilarious, raw, and touching...Abrahams emerged to write about her experience in an honest, funny, and somehow relatable way." -- The Comedians (full review)

    "Abrahams provides readers with a profound anecdotal look of growing up as a Jehovah Witness" -- Harriet Klausner, Genre Go Round

    "It's a rare writer who can tell of oppression, repression, or really horrible decisions yet still be entertaining and amusing." -- About.com (full review)

    "Imagine a world where the Devil might be hiding in Smurfs or yard sales, where dancing and holidays are considered the work of Satan..." -- Martha Frankel, New York Post (full review)

    "A brilliant portrait of a faltering fundamentalist teen on the brink, finally rising like a phoenix from her own ashes." -- The Apiary (full review)

    "Kyria Abrahams, former teen bride of a doomsday cult and seeker of salvation in slam poetry, tells the terribly funny story of her improbable life with candor, wit, and an unsparing eye for the perfect detail. Brilliant." -- Janice Erlbaum, author of Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir

    "Amazingly vivid and profoundly compelling. Twisted, touching, absurd, hilarious, and honest. A new kind of memoir." -- Wendy Spero, author of Microthrills

    "Kyria Abrahams can do the 'coming-of-age in a sea of eternal hellfire' story like nobody else. Her tale of an adolescence in the ranks of the Jehovah's Witnesses is irresistible, thanks to her hilarious, sweet, and knowing narrator." -- Bob Powers, author of Happy Cruelty Day!

    "Miraculous...hilarious....Simultaneously affectionate and aware, Kyria recounts a childhood and young womanhood that at once seems completely universal and breathtakingly bizarre." -- Adam Felber, author of Schrodinger's Ball and panelist on NPR's "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!"

    "This book is hilarious." -- Sacremento News and Review (Read the full online conversation about the book!)



    WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

    "It seems like a bit of ego-stroking to think that The World really cares about a person's experiences growing up in a religious cult." - A fellow blogger

    "As a 46 year old mother of four I could not take my eyes off of the young woman running from one empty solution to the next. I was getting depressed half way through the book and was tempted to abandon it but thought that the end would bring some resolution to the headlong manner in which the heroine threw herself from one frying pan into another. I was wrong." - Excerpted from an online 1-star review

    "There is no such thing as an exjw. Just ones who are not living up to their dedication. That is what this kyria is doing, not living up to her dedication if she really was dedicated to Jehovah." - A Jehovah's Witness

    "It seems it was her choices that took her down the wrong road into whoredom. How can one blame it upon a religion?" - From a thread on Topix.com

    "I found it a disgusting, painful, and pathetic tell-all that should have been shut up. How anyone could tout this book as humorous is beyond me. I could write funnier about Lutherans. In fact, Garrison Keillor already has." - Georganna Hancock's Site for Writing, Editing, and More