Posted on 09/25/2010 5:03:14 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Liz Murray's story of her journey from starving as a child in the Bronx to Ivy League success has become an American bestseller
A woman who overcame tremendous odds to go from "homeless to Harvard" has turned her life story into an American bestseller.
Liz Murray, 29, rose from some of New York's meanest streets to graduate from the Ivy League and has become an international speaker. But some of her earliest memories are of her parents spending their welfare payments on cocaine and heroin when she and her sister were starving: "We ate ice cubes because it felt like eating. We split a tube of toothpaste between us for dinner."
When she became homeless at 16, as well as stealing food she would shoplift self-help books and study for exams in a friend's hallway. Now Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard, has burst on to the New York Times bestseller list. Hailed as a "white-knuckle account of survival", it is to be published in Britain in January.
Born in the Bronx, Liz watched her parents mainlining coke all day. "Both my parents were hippies. By the time the early 1980s came around and I'd been born, their disco dancing thing had become a drug habit," she recalls.
She talks frequently about how much she loved them and how much they loved her, how they were highly intelligent but rendered hopeless at parenting by their drug dependence and consequent poverty. She remembers her mother stealing her birthday money, selling the television, and even the Thanksgiving turkey a church had given them,
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Is that considered an improvement or deterioration?
She is an amazing lady. I thought she quit Harvard a few years after she started there. Saw the movie years ago.
It will be interesting to see where she landed politically.
Did she turn out Republican? The turkey came from a church probably made up of right-wing Christians. The welfare dependency was responsible for her parents’ ability to actually get into such a drug-addicted lifestyle by taking away the negative consequences of laziness.
Did she turn out Democrat? It’s hard to overcome a Harvard brainwashing, er, education.
I wonder...
drug addicts or Harvard graduate
Which is worse?
Actually, her parents were politicians. But she would have been ashamed to admit that.
Duh, I should have read the article. She just recently graduated.
I read article this time,, and alas, I think she got sucked into liberalism. The New York Times gave her a scholarship to Harvard. She has met Bill Clinton.
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Born in the Bronx, Liz watched her parents mainlining coke all day. "Both my parents were hippies. By the time the early 1980s came around and I'd been born, their disco dancing thing had become a drug habit," she recalls.Drugs are a tool Satan uses to steal souls.She talks frequently about how much she loved them and how much they loved her, how they were highly intelligent but rendered hopeless at parenting by their drug dependence and consequent poverty. She remembers her mother stealing her birthday money, selling the television, and even the Thanksgiving turkey a church had given them,
I do not understand you all. This young lady saw what a life she had in store for her future and found a way to better it. Good for her. Anyone who did what she did under the same circumstances deserve our praise not being made fun of.
Do you know why she got the scholarship to Harvard? Her mentor told her about it and he really hesitated to write the essay saying why she deserved it. She won. It paid for all her expenses while she went there. She did it herself which is more than most people her age do.
she not he.
That was a dig at Harvard, not the lady.
The drug addict is probably the more honorable and honest of the two.
Amazing story.
I guess if you can confess to the world that your parents were drug addicts, you can admit to having met Clinton, too.
If her parents really loved her why did they let her stave?
I was thinking that the world would be a better place if many of the Harvard graduates had become drug addicts instead.
That’s the power of drug addiction. When they need a fix they will do anything to get it.
I would venture to say she’s a dem and liberal. Star Parker doesn’t get any credit for pulling herself up by the bootstraps because she’s a conservative. She didn’t get a Harvard education either...
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