James Brown’s daughter Yamma Brown published a memoir, Cold Sweat, earlier this month that revealed a dark side to James Brown that wasn’t mentioned in this summer’s biopic Get On Up. An excerpt published on Vulture details her father’s abuse of her mother while she was a very young child.
“My father never beat us, but sometimes I think a beating would have been less hurtful than hearing the sounds of him using my mother as his punching bag,” she recounts.
“As much as I loved my father, and I sure loved him, I hated him during those times. And I didn’t like my mother much, either,” she admits. These times of conflicting emotions are common among children in an abusive home. When the abused parent doesn’t stand up for themselves or leave, children can be confused about what is normal. “I didn’t understand why she let my father treat her like that. If she couldn’t stand up for herself, how would she protect me?”
Yamma didn’t let the anger she felt towards her parents’ relationship prevent her from getting into the very same situation with her husband. Children of abuse often repeat the cycle, a statistic Yamma wishes she had known when she was a young girl vowing to not to get herself into this type of situation.
She married Darren after a whirlwind romance, and while things were okay at first, they quickly escalated to an unsafe and abusive relationship. It started with a verbally abusive argument that went too far. Looking back, Yamma believes she should have left then, but she didn’t. “It wasn’t until a decade later, when I was lying on that cold tile floor, with my head pounding and my vision blurred from being punched in the face, that I finally saw my marriage with absolute clarity, and I knew it was over.”
When she did decide to leave her marriage, she finally confronted her dad about his abuse against her mom. His response was shocking to her. “‘Yamma,’ he said. ‘I love you both. Marriage is hard. Everyone has problems. Disagreements. You’re no different than anyone else. Try to work it out. Don’t call me again until you do.'”
