Homeschooled - by Stefan Merrill Block (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A heartbreaking, empowering and often hilarious debut memoir about a mother's all-consuming love, a son's perilous quest to discover the world beyond the front door and the unregulated homeschool system that impacts millions like him

Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were "stifling his creativity." Hungry for more time with her boy who was growing up too quickly, she began to instruct Stefan in the family's living room. Beyond his formal lessons in math, however, Stefan was largely left to his own devices and his mother's erratic whims, such as her project to recapture her twelve-year-old son's early years by bleaching his hair and putting him on a crawling regimen.

Years before homeschooling would become a massive nationwide movement, at a time when it had just become legal in his home state of Texas, Stefan vanished into that unseen space and into his mother's increasingly eccentric theories and projects. But when, after five years away from the outside world, Stefan reentered the public school system in Plano as a freshman, he was in for a jarring awakening.

At once a novelistic portrait of mother and son, and an illuminating window into an overlooked corner of the American education system, Homeschooled is a moving, funny and ultimately inspiring story of a son's battle for a life of his own choosing, and the wages of a mother's insatiable love.

Review Quotes

"Homeschooled unlocks the door to a private universe in a carpeted house in Plano, Texas, occupied for years by just middle-school-aged Stefan and his mother. Block is unflinching in both his honesty about his unhappiness and his profound love for the mother who didn't want to let him grow up. An important book for our current world, Block's brave story will help a lot of people feel less alone. An instant classic."--Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow

"Stefan Merrill Block's Homeschooled is an often touching, often disturbing, but always engrossing examination of a mother's love and the ever-shifting ways in which we view our own histories. Clearly told with the steadiness of a masterful writer, Block guides us through the complications of going from being a cloistered, homeschooled child to a parent himself, and how the complexities of his own upbringing shifted his world. Told in tight, confident prose, Block pulls readers into a childhood where education and control intertwine in unsettling ways, a confounding life oscillating between affection and oppression. This is an urgent, wrenching, fantastically told tale that is also filled with hope, much the same way a heart can both break and hold fast under the weight of a mother's touch."--Isaac Fitzgerald, New York Times bestselling author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts

"Stefan Merrill Block's Homeschooled is a love story and a domestic horror story, so insightfully written that you can't always separate its loving aspects from its horrifying ones. Its depiction of familial terrors, all inflicted in the name of devotion, driven by the all-too-human need for more devotion, and yet more, raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I didn't fully realize I'd read it in a single sitting until it became clear that dusk had fallen, and it was time to turn the lights on."--Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

"Block presents his boyhood without vanity or fear or illusions and paints his broken, delusional mother with nothing but love. Painful, funny, honest, heartbreaking. Nothing less than a sensational book."--Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less and Less Is Lost

"Stefan Merrill Block has penned a coming-of-age saga for the ages. A smart, deep boy growing up in the suicide capital of Texas, Block was taken hostage by a needy mother under the guise of homeschooling. His escape into high school, college, and a literary life in New York is a moving page-turner, in turns hilarious and compassionate, furious and faithful. Anybody with a mama needs to read this. Bravo!"--Mary Karr, New York Times bestselling author of The Liars' Club

"Like Tara Westover's Educated, a compelling and horrifying account, leavened with flashes of rueful humor." -Kirkus Reviews

"Novelist Block delivers a wrenching account of his traumatic homeschooling in suburban Texas... Lyrical, harrowing, and politically pointed, this is both a moving coming-of-age story and a clarion call for reform." -Publishers Weekly

"Through this poignant memoir that seamlessly blends humor, anger, and sadness, readers will appreciate Block's journey from homeschooling to adulthood." -Booklist