Shake that Cream: Battling Gods and Monsters in the Backwoods of East Texas by Ellen Black weaves the warp and weft threads of her past into a tapestry depicting an abusive childhood growing up in a dysfunctional household that joined Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God cult in the late 1950s as well as her lifelong quest to escape to normal.
Black chronicles events growing up in small-town Texas, attending Herbert W’s church and school. As a bonus negative, her father also taught at the school and knew her every move. Nowhere in her childhood did she receive affirmation, encouragement, or love. Yet, while she longed for it and lived in a sea of disappointment, she hung on to hope that somehow eventually her parents would love her.
When
she goes away to college and graduates, she finally escapes the clutches of the
church and her parents, but does she really? What happens when her racist
parents learn she has a bi-racial child outside of marriage? They travel to New
York City to kidnap her baby daughter and in a blink, the nightmare stands at
her door again.
Shake
that Cream is a moving, highly readable, firsthand account of what Black
underwent being raised in the Worldwide Church of God cult. She articulates how
Armstrong influenced her parents and so many others. While the details are
disturbing, even as Black describes the abuse she and her brother suffered,
this enthralling and harrowing memoir carries the reader on a journey of hope
through a quagmire of false Christian doctrines, control, abuse, lies, anger,
and more. Shake that Cream masterfully weaves Ellen’s story in a way that lays
out her dire situation but doesn’t get mired in the negative. She tells her
story from the first-person point of view and delivers it with enough humor to
help ease the pain, and a heart full of forgiveness that brings hope. She not
only escaped but survived with her sense of self intact and the toxic cycle
broken.
I recommend Shake that Cream to the cult curious, those interested in secret societies, and false religions, and those trying to learn more about the Worldwide Church of God. I also recommend it to other survivors who have grown up with such physical and emotional pain and are trying to find their way to their own new normal. I award this book a strong four stars.
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