Beyond Belief

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape by Jenna Miscavige Hill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't normally read memoirs of celebrities or other people who were made known by public media. I feel that a person’s memoir shouldn’t be read as an entertainment, but as something that one could learn a few life lessons from. But, I need to read the newest Scientology Book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief for a group discussion, and figured that this newly published memoir written in a first person account by a previous Scientologist would be a great complement to help my understanding of the organization. I'm so glad I did.

However, as a Chinese American whose parents and Grandparents suffered during the Cultural Revolution and Communist reign in China, it absolutely broke my heart to realize that similar practices could happen right here, right now, in our free and democratic country. Many techniques Jenna and her peers had suffered since young was not news for people who recognize them: Uniform dress code, isolation from the public, chanting/singing, vague and fuzzy ideals/doctrines, lack of privacy, controlled and public punishment, peer evaluation/finger-pointing, controlled diet, forced labor/resulted fatigues, metacommunications, mass gatherings, child/physical/mental abuse, personal and public humiliation, impossible and long work to move up the rank.... I could go on and on and on. It's unbelievable what kind of practice could evolve from the misuse of the First Amendment. Reading this book invoked lots of anger in me that I didn't even realize I have.

Putting my own feelings aside. The book was wonderfully written. Jenna Miscavige is the niece of the leader of Scientology, Dave Miscavige. She was born into a Scientology family. Both sides of her grandparents were devoted Scientologists and her parents were leaders in the Sea Org (where the highest rank and most devoted Scientologists belong) with prominent and important jobs. She was raised a Scientologist since birth and was in a children's camp since a toddler until she voluntarily left the organization in her early 20's after here wedding. Her narrative voice was down to earth, even child-like...which drew me in right from the beginning. She was able to tell the story quite objectively, just like Jeanette Wall's The Glass Castle, with no self-pity or extreme anger. She laid out all the facts exactly as what they were with no up- or downplaying. Ultimately it's up to each reader to draw his/her own conclusion at the end.

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