Born in a Massachusetts mill town in 1956, Darlene Rameau is number eight of what would become 14 children. When she is three years old, a social worker reports that Darlene is segregated from the rest of the family in a filthy room, treated like an animal, and unable to walk. At age seven, Darlene is sent to Belchertown State School, a de-humanizing institution where she meets a sister she didn’t know she had. Darlene considers herself an “it,” unworthy of a name. Little Girl, Boy, and Brains are voices in her head who help her survive. Her dream is to raise a family of her own, but at 17 she is discharged into a world where she has no idea how to make that dream a reality.
In his second gripping account about life within the notorious Belchertown State School in western Massachusetts—You’ll Like It Here, the story of Donald Vitkus was his first—Ed Orzechowski has done it again. Becoming Darlene is a true story, but it reads like a novel.
—David Kassel, editor, The COFAR Voice
Ed Orzechowski’s masterful rendering reveals the unspeakable conditions of institutional life for children in mid-twentieth-century America. He writes with searing honesty about the survival of a remarkable girl who creates her own inner resources to emerge with her dreams intact.
—Jacqueline Sheehan, PhD, New York Times best-selling author
Orzechowski’s ability to write another’s story in the first person, with grace and dignity, is a true gift. Not since Studs Turkel have we had an
interviewer who can bring a whole world to life in the act of listening to one voice.
—Celia Jeffries, author of Blue Desert
