Kitten: Growin' Up the Hard Way

Caraffa's autobiography of abuse and instability in both childhood and adulthood lilts from one tragic event to the next with little reflection and an optimism that strongly resembles denial. In 1948, at the age of five, Caraffa is kidnapped by her abusive father, Albert, and taken from her mother in Philadelphia to California. There Albert finds a new wife, Virgie, and Caraffa has three years that she calls ``happy times'' even as she recounts Albert's horrific and frequent rages; one time, he makes the girls eat off the floor like dogs. Virgie finally walks out, and the children are shipped from boarding school to orphanage to their grandmother's house, and back to the orphanage after Albert dies of cancer. Yet the author tells a social worker that she and her sister ``had no complaints; our life was simply our life.'' As she faces graduation from high school, Caraffa begins to imagine a better life, but her abusive lover, John, forces her to marry him when she becomes pregnant. The author's blindness leads her to speak of her father in glowing terms and to send her children back to John after they separate, claiming that he can provide for them better than she can. (Jan.)