I'm Glad My Mom Died: the impact of Jennette McCurdy's bestseller

The title is surprising and may have been part of what made the book a bestseller. We are talking about 'I'm Glad My Mom Died' (2022), the first book by Jennette McCurdy.

The actress-turned-writer, born in Los Angeles in 1992, wrote an autobiography that became a bestseller. It was the most requested book in New York libraries in 2023 and the Best Seller #1 in the New York Times.

Photo: Trends Editions

The general public may know MCurdy for the Nickelodeon series iCarly' (2007-2012) and 'Sam & Cat' (2013-2014), in which she successfully starred alongside Ariana Grande. In 2018, she decided to leave the world of acting and focus on her roles as a screenwriter and director.

In the book, she tells a heartbreaking story mixed with high doses of black humor. In the first person, she recounts her difficult childhood and adolescence. She also describes how the death of her mother impacted her in 2013.

Jennette McCurdy grew up in Garden Grove (California) in a family without many resources. They belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Her mother, Debra McCurdy, homeschooled Jennette along with her older siblings. As she recounts later, her mom was a controlling, mentally unstable woman obsessed with her daughter's success.

Success came when the young Jennette McCurdy was cast in some of the most successful series. However, the price of her fame was very high.

"I grew to resent fame," Jenette writes. "It was my mom’s wish for me, it was never the thing that I had set my sights on." Jennette simply wanted to make her mother happy, at the expense of her own happiness.

Jennette McCurdy's mother had always wanted to be an actress and decided to live her dream through her daughter. The girl was subjected to a relationship of abuse and manipulation that ended up affecting her psychologically long after the death of her mother.

Apart from her mother, there's another person in the book that many people have speculated about. She calls him 'The Creator' and recalls he used to put her in situations a girl like her was not prepared for. She even offered her alcohol...

Many people interpreted 'The Creator' as Dan Schneider, the producer of series like 'Zoey 101', 'iCarly' and 'Sam & Cat'. A lot of stories about the producer and his inappropriate behavior around child stars have started to circulate.

As Jennette recalls in her book, her mother was aware of many of these incidents with the producer but did not do anything about them. She just told her daughter that this was the price of success.

When Jennette was a child, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She would be sick for two decades and emotionally blackmail her relatives using her illness.

Jennette McCurdy's mother controlled her daughter's entire life, including her career, intimate life, her diet, her physique, her finances, her relationships... It generated situations of stress and anxiety for the young actress.

Her mom had Jennette whiten her teeth and dye her eyelashes blonde. She also controlled everything the girl ate, which eventually caused her to suffer from anorexia and bulimia.

Another heartbreaking episode in the autobiography was the moment when some photos leaked of the actress in a swimsuit in Hawaii with her boyfriend. It caused her mother to go into a rage, calling her "little sIut" and "ugly monster."

Jennette McCurdy's mother was obsessed with continuing to perpetuate the childlike image of her daughter that generated lucrative roles in children's series.

Because of all this abuse, the death of her mother felt like a liberation to Jennette McCurdy. Debra passed away in September 2013.

After the trauma of losing an abusive mother, however, Jennette entered a dark period of self-destruction plagued by toxic relationships and alcohol.

She went to therapy, which helped her understand that everything that happened to her was the result of the abusive relationship she had had with her mother. As she recounts in the book, it was a painful but healing process.

She also reveals in the book that Nickelodeon offered her a significant sum of money in exchange for her silence about any misbehavior by 'The Creator'.

Jennette rejected Nickelodeon's offer. That is why she was free to tell her traumatic experience in a bestselling book. As fellow actress Lena Dunham said, "Jennette McCurdy is the queen of lemonade from lemons."

McCurdy "[used] her trauma to weave a painfully funny story that also illuminates the commodification of teenage girls in America," Dunham said, adding that the book is "an important cultural document just as much as a searingly personal one."

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