Unfit

De: Lara Cleveland Torgesen

Narrado por: Lara Cleveland Torgesen

Chrissy Rollings has a mountain of troubles to overcome, one that would crush most other girls her age. She was born in a small North Carolina town in 1952, into a poor but happy and loving family that always managed to scrape by each month... until the night her father died in a car crash, plunging the family into poverty. Chrissy’s mother is forced to take low-paying jobs to supplement her meager welfare checks, leaving Chrissy to raise her five siblings. But even these sacrifices are not enough.

North Carolina was among the states to practice eugenics — forcing sterilization procedures on thousands of people deemed “unfit” to reproduce. When Chrissy’s mother was faced with the choice of having 14-year-old Chrissy sterilized or losing her welfare check, she makes the only choice she feels she can and signs the consent form. That act of survival sets into motion a series of events that shape the course of Chrissy’s life forever.

Despite knowing in her heart that she did not deserve to be sterilized, that she was not in fact “unfit,” Chrissy struggles for the rest of her life with feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, and a belief that she doesn’t deserve to have anything good happen to her. Little by little, though, Chrissy claws her way past every obstacle, slowly building a new family of friends and eventually finding her soul mate, with whom she is reborn. With their support, she becomes a woman who is strong, loving, intelligent, and anything but unfit. Her gripping story is an inspiration for anyone who started life with little hope for the future, those who faced problems that felt insurmountable, or just anyone who ever felt “unfit.”

©2013 Lara Torgesen (P)2023 Lara Torgesen