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A Decade of Darkness, A New Beginning

Why Finding Me, Michelle Knight’s memoir of the Cleveland kidnappings, is agonising, heart-breaking, and an absolute must-read

I remember hearing about the Cleveland kidnappings in May 2013, just like everyone else. I remember feeling shocked, disturbed and angry at the thought of what happened in Ariel Castro’s ‘House of Horrors’ — and feeling a torrent of sympathy towards the three women he imprisoned. But then months went by and I gradually forgot about it.

It was not like I no longer had any idea about what had happened, or was happening to his victims. But did I really ponder over the trauma that they must have undergone? Or think about the men, women or children who go missing every single day? Not really.

Michelle Knight, the first woman to be kidnapped by Castro over a decade ago, shines a new light on a topic that is undoubtedly as disturbing as they come, in her memoir Finding Me, written with Michelle Buford. The preface alone is heart-rending, where Knight mentions others who went through similar ordeals and urges us not only to ‘remember those who are lost’, but to notify the police if we ever feel like something is ‘off about a situation’.

The autobiography starts off with an account of her early childhood — which the book’s blurb describes as ‘tumultuous’, although that seems like a complete understatement. As a child, Knight and her family lived in a station wagon for a few years before they started shifting from one house to another. Nothing is said about her parents’ professions, but it becomes evident that she and her brothers lived lives of constant neglect and chaos — where using toothpaste twice a week was a luxury and unknown ‘relatives’ seemed to be coming and going at all hours of the day and night.

After suffering years of abuse, she ran away from home, inadvertently labelling herself as a ‘flight risk’, and was briefly homeless before her family brought her back. A brief high school affair left her with a son, Joey, to take care of, and very limited financial means. Moreover, when her mother’s boyfriend injured Joey, she found herself battling for custody of her young son.

And these are the events that made up her life before her kidnapping. In fact, Knight was on her way to meet social services in an attempt to get Joey back when Ariel Castro, under the pretence of driving her to court, lured her into his house. Then began the years of torture.

Knight doesn’t call Ariel Castro by his name, preferring to refer to him as ‘the dude’ because ‘a monster doesn’t deserve to have a real name’. Nor does she really go into detail about all the events that occurred in that house, stating that some were too painful for her to describe. However, what events she does mention gives readers more than a good idea of how utterly horrifying her decade in captivity was.

Finding Me was released on the one-year anniversary of Knight’s, Berry’s and DeJesus’s world-famous escape, which it describes in detail. The writing is simple — you can expect a lot of short sentences and colloquial language. Sentences like ‘Mornings were nuts in our house’ or ‘At home I listened to a ton of radio’ jump out at you, emphasising Knight’s innocent nature. However, that doesn’t mean the memoir is easy to read — the events that took place in that house are more than enough to turn a few stomachs.

More than once, I was asked why I bothered reading the memoir, especially because it played havoc upon my emotions. But Knight’s memoir, in its own simple way, reminds us that no matter how ugly, the truth always deserves a voice.janice@khaleejtimes.com