I'm Glad My Mom Died is a 2022 memoir by American writer, director and former actress Jennette McCurdy based on her one-woman show of the same name. The book is about her career as a child actress and her difficult relationship with her abusive mother who died in 2013. This is McCurdy's first book and was published on August 9, 2022, by Simon & Schuster.[1]
Background
McCurdy had been a professional actress from age six until she announced that she had permanently stopped acting in 2017.[2] From 2009 to 2012, she was signed to Capitol Records Nashville, who released her self-titled debut studio album in 2012.[2]
McCurdy had previously written pieces in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and began writing personal essays shortly after. She sent some of the essays to her manager at the time, who encouraged her to write a book about her experiences. Rather than write a book, McCurdy created a one-woman show titled I'm Glad My Mom Died which she performed in Los Angeles and New York City. Plans to tour the show in other cities were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and she decided to write her material into a memoir.[1]
McCurdy stated that she had rejected $300,000 from Nickelodeon to not talk publicly about her experiences at the network, including actions of a producer at Nickelodeon described pseudonymously as "The Creator".[1][3][4][5]
Book cover
The cover features McCurdy looking up and holding a pink urn with decorative paper spilling out. About the decision to use the photo for the book cover, McCurdy told Entertainment Weekly:
Confetti spilling out of an urn felt to me like a good way of capturing the humor in the tragedy, but I knew I didn't want to go as far as throwing the confetti or jumping in the air with a huge smile on my face or doing any other kind of body language / facial expression that could read as flippant. Ultimately I chose a facial expression that I think reads as sincere, a little pained, and a little hopeful.[6]
Synopsis
In the memoir, McCurdy discusses her childhood as a successful child actress, her brief foray into a career in country music, and the troubled and controlling relationship she had with her mother, Debra, who died from cancer in 2013.[7][8] She describes a strained relationship with a producer at Nickelodeon she referred to only as "The Creator", whom BuzzFeed News and other sources speculated to be Dan Schneider.[1][3][4][9]
The book is divided into two sections, "Before" and "After", which describe the events of her life before and after the death of her mother.[10][11]
I'm Glad My Mom Died was met with "rave" reviews from critics, with review aggregator Book Marks reporting that none of the nine reviews were negative or mixed.[17][18] In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called the book "Insightful and incisive, heartbreaking and raw."[19]Kirkus Reviews, which also gave a starred review, wrote that the book is, "The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace."[20]
Nana Li Coomes of The Atlantic called it "a layered account of a woman reckoning with love and violence at once."[21]Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times wrote that the memoir was "a coming-of-age story that is alternately harrowing and mordantly funny."[1]
