Faith Jones bridges entertainment and empathy by penning a page-turning memoir that is not just a fascinating and heartbreaking look at life inside a cult, but ultimately an empowering story of resilience ... At first, in describing her childhood, Jones' writing is simple and straightforward, sharing her daily life while educating the reader on the Family's cultish rules such as speaking in code, reporting on each other's activities, distrust of outsiders and authority. But as she ages and becomes more sophisticated, so does her prose.
Jones brilliantly articulates not just the Family's shortcomings in terms of personal freedom but expands on society's as a whole ... The only critique on Sex Cult Nun, is wishing for a more in-depth look at Jones' life after she was emancipated from the Family. She touches on some of her college, law school and professional life but just enough for us to want more. Reading more about her life and her struggles post-cult would make for a fascinating and welcome follow-up.
... the lurid title doesn’t remotely capture the flavor of Faith Jones’s thoughtful, carefully recounted memoir. Not to imply the book is not disturbing. There are many images you will wish you could forget, and descriptions of sexual mores and practices that call into question basic human values. But there are no nuns, and Jones’s life was anything but chaste, though not by choice ... The author’s absorbing, meticulously detailed description of her early life with her eight siblings in Macau, and later episodes in Thailand, Hong Kong, the U.S. and Kazakhstan, recall both The Glass Castle and Educated. The extreme poverty, hard work and over-the-top physical punishment are balanced by a child’s-eye view of a fascinating, unfamiliar world ... this memoir has left me questioning humanity in some of the same ways as first-person accounts of the Holocaust. It is engrossing and well-crafted; it is shocking and at times, salacious; it is also seriously important.
Jones not only shined a marvelous light on the criminally destructive nature of religious cults and how the effects of abuse and mind control permeated every aspect of the followers’ lives. Sex Cult Nun also provides a narrative of triumph that one could escape an egregious cult and create an authentic life free from abuse. As Faith Jones has done for herself, may her life story be a testament to the power of determination and the quest for freedom at all costs.
Jones, an attorney who got her law degree from UC Berkeley, tells her harrowing story in a brisk present-tense voice, lending her recollections a sense of disturbing immediacy ... As she demonstrates in this powerful book, Jones figured out the truth for herself.
Jones opens her book with a history of the cult and its phases, giving unfamiliar readers a helpful overview ... her disillusionment comes slowly, bit by bit. It takes years for her to fully leave, and her journey out is an often painful one filled with horrors, delusions, traumas, triumphs, moments of tenderness, and the occasional actual humanitarian work alongside all the proselytizing. Where the book begins to falter and become occasionally aggravating is when Jones begins her life in the United States in her early 20s ... she's translated her approach to personal survival into a message she seems to think everyone could benefit from, a bootstrap message of personal responsibility above all. Stranger still is Jones' revelation toward the end of the book in which she describes her approach to life and women's liberation as being similar to American property laws ... It's also rather uncomfortable, talking about indoctrination, to witness Jones trying to sell her TEDx Talk message at the end of the book, especially when she applies it so broadly as to sound, suspiciously, guru-like ... The book might have had more impact if Jones had shared her story without trying to tack on a single, overarching, packageable message at its end.
... exceptional ... Jones’s book is a truly inspirational account of questioning her upbringing (the only life she knew) and becoming a successful lawyer. She writes that her will to succeed pointed her toward a new, independent way of life that she was proud to call her own ... A must-read memoir of self-discovery and reinvention that readers will find impossible to put down. Pass along to fans of Tara Westover’s Educated.
... outstanding ... In thrilling detail, [Jones] describes a childhood spent off the grid throughout Southeast Asia ... As Jones transports readers from Macau to Kazakhstan to the United States, Jones skillfully provides the mental framework to understand her past as an indoctrinated individual in hopes of helping others 'stand up for themselves.' This remarkable account of self-liberation is not to be missed.
Complex and richly detailed, the book provides fascinating insights into a secretive religious organization while offering often heartbreaking details about the nature and repercussions of growing up indoctrinated in a cult ... A powerful and disturbing memoir.
