Barbarian: A Semi-Autobiographical Memoir

Abstract

Take a glance at Kate Irwin’s background and budding résumé, and her life seems just about as charmed as they come. She graduated number one in her Texas public high school class at sixteen years old. She then took a gap year, during which she lived and worked in New York City as a successful teen model. Now, at eighteen, she’s finishing up her first year at Harvard, where she’s trying to find her place in the college newspaper. But, as we all know, appearances can be deceiving. The reality is that Kate’s world is crumbling. Kate is facing expulsion from Harvard after two semesters of academic probation; her short-lived modeling career was an unintended outcome of a depression-related eating disorder that began around puberty; and, she’s struggling with severe alcohol addiction and PTSD from a childhood rampant with a trifecta of abuse: physical, verbal, and sexual. Barbarian: A Semi-Autobiographical Memoir follows Kate from the crushing blow of her expulsion, which will require her to take a year off from her studies; during that time, her only option is to go home, a place to which she’d sworn she’d never return. When Kate gets home, she finds her six-year-old niece—who is also named Katherine Irwin, due to an embarrassing family situation—is living in her old childhood bedroom, going to her old elementary school, and following in Kate Sr.’s footsteps. Much to our protagonist’s horror, Little Katie may be living the same nightmare she herself lived a decade earlier.