Cheryl Peck

Cheryl Peck

Cheryl Peck's new memoirs feel like letters from an old friend. From the reliability of old cars to strange psychic encounters and the nature of cats to the many uses of Dremels, she never fails to delight with tales from her life. Peck mixes stories of her childhood with stories of her present. She relates the struggle of growing up with a hypercritical mother and a distant father. She also tells about her unending challenge to fit into an unforgiving world.

"Shopping" tells how for years her entire wardrobe fit in a WWII parachute bag. Even after attaining a job in a welfare office, she still dressed as close to the bottom of the fashion chain as possible. Shortly after the publication of her first book, a friend locks her in a clothing store with two clerks who wait on her hand and foot. In "Fatso" we get a taste of what it's like to be discriminated against because of size. Peck provides a list of bad manners she has been forced to endure by denying that she, as a middle class white person, has ever experienced any of them. It is one of the most thought provoking chapters of the book.

"The Kitten," perhaps the most moving of her memoirs, falls near the end. It relates a moment from her childhood that gives insight into her person and neatly ties together the rest of the stories. so when one of my staff members told me she wrote a paper on the discrimination against attractive people, I laughed, but then I thought, "you know, she has a point." The thing is, we're not allowed to talk about it. It's like saying white men are discriminated against. It goes against the grain of everything we're fighting for as a society, ...