Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography

Mother Teresa's frail appearance belied the steely will and public-relations savvy she brought to the task of loosening potential donor's purse strings and attracting attention to her cause. Was Mother Teresa a kind of spiritual colonialist, as critics have charged, more interested in helping the poor die in a state of grace than in changing the conditions in which they lived? Spink discusses this and other thorny questions with grace and honesty, at the same time emphasizing her subject's admirable achievements.

Product Description
During her lifetime, Mother Teresa resisted having her full biography written. Then, in 1991, realizing that accounts of her life and work could inspire others, she gave Kathryn Spink, who had long been intimately involved with the work of Mother Teresa and her order and co-workers around the world, permission to proceed with a complete biography on the understanding that it would not be finished until after her death.

Here, now, is the complete story of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a woman regarded by millions as a contemporary saint for her dedication to serving the poorest of the poor. From her childhood in Balkans as a member of a remarkably openhearted and religious family to her work in India, from attending the victims of war-torn Beirut to pleading with George Bush and Saddam Hussein to choose peace over war. Mother Teresa was driven by an absolute faith. She consistently claimed that she was simply responding to Christ's boundless love for her and for all of humanity. When People magazine interviewed Kathryn Spink for their cover story on Mother Teresa 's death, Spink told them: "What one has to understand about Mother Teresa is that she sees Christ in every person she encounters." Clad in her white peasant sari with blue edging, Mother Teresa brought to the world a great and living lesson in joyful and selfless love.

Spink's "Mother Teresa," reads, at times, like a laundry list of events with no coherent effort made to illuminate the person behind the events. The best biographies I have found don't rely so much on the cold hard history to build a story around, but rather insight as to who the person is and how they interacted with the world. I think of skillfully told biographies in which I walked away from the reading of them with insight, motivation, and the feeling that I knew the subject and was engaged in their life. Benson's "John Steinbeck: Writer," and Morris "Theodore Rex," come to mind as examples. Spink's "Mother Teresa," does not do the same.

I credit the writer for tackling some tough issues in the last two chapters. She addresses criticisms of Mother Teresa and the Sister's of Charity co-workers and does so without sidestepping difficult points of contention. Some social work critics fault the work of Mother Teresa for not wielding her influence to address the root causes of poverty and only tackling the end-product of suffering in a simplistic manner. In addition, Mother Teresa was loyal to the Catholic Church and stood staunch in support of difficult traditional stances espoused by that organization to include pro-life in all cases. Spink's does a good job of pitting Mother Teresa's perspective of service and belief to explain why she did what she did and why she believed as she did. However, this isn't until the last two chapters of the book and this illuminating approach could have been begun on page 1.

All in all, I would only recommend this book if you are attempting to delve deeply into the life and times of Mother Teresa and have read other books on that subject. If you want a good read and are just scratching the surface finding out what Mother Teresa's life was all about, look elsewhere dear reader.
--MMW


A fitting tribute in memory of Mother   August 26, 2000
Shawn Chua (Singapore)
11 out of 14 found this review helpful

As an authorised biography, this status alone bestows upon the tome an added weight of truth and accuracy. However, as Mother Teresa herself always wanted it to be, the book is more on her work than her life. She never wanted the attention to be forcused on herself but rather on the work. As she herself succinctly put it, she is merely a pencil in the hand of God. This book fills us in on the path which took Mother from her childhood in Albania to her days at the Loreto convent to her calling in a calling during her trip to Darjeeling to finally her establishment of the Missionaries of Charity and the result of which we have more than ample proof of now. It provides details on the trials and tribulations she faced and encounterd in the process of her work and how she overcame them with her determination and faith. This book provides the necessary details in mapping out a sketch of Mother's life and work. However fitting this tribute, we must not forget that Mother herself was the actual paradigm of chastity, poverty, obedience and service to the poorest of the poor. Nothing can ever truly introduce us to the scale of the greatness of Mother. Her legendary selflessness and selfishness truly brings us to our knees in shame. This book truly embodies the paragon of love and religion that was Mother. She was the epitome of a modern day Saint. She was a living Saint. May she rest in peace. She is finally at home with God.


Good primer but lacks 'edge'.   September 17, 1998
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

A good introduction to Mother Teresa but limited by the nature of all 'authorised' versions in that the warts are not evident. There is not enough comment from the workers that surrounded her in Calcutta. I was looking for the day-to-day woman that in her own lifetime was recognised as a Living Saint. After having read the enthralling account of "THE Autobiography of Jesus of Nazareth..." by Richard Patton, I had expected a harder look at this Christian icon. Like Patton's book I wanted to 'realise' the Christ that Mother Teresa saw in everyone. This is an excellent primer for those that do not already have any other books on their shelves about Mother Teresa, but lacks the insight to her humanity - the insight which rightfully claimed her the title of "Living Saint".


A subject greater than her biography   August 13, 1998
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

Mother Teresa authorized this biography, but there are other books and videos that have captured her essence better. There's not much in the way of interviews with her contemporaries and her opponents in order to paint a picture of the subject. Instead, it's a very adoring and very superficial account of her life. (For instance, Eileen Egan is mentioned twice and apparently was never interviewed. Mother Teresa's niece is absent from the narrative. The Christopher Hitchens charges are alluded to, but not mentioned or addressed.) You can actually learn more about Mother Teresa and her deep, abiding love for God in other biographies or in the Petrie documentary. I read this while going back and forth into my other Mother Teresa books of prayers and found this one lacking in the one thing that Mother Teresa would have wanted: a sense of the reason why she became who she was.


NOT Albania, but Yugoslavia   August 4, 2003
Maria Terzija, D.M.D. (Pitman, NJ United States)
7 out of 36 found this review helpful

Mother Teresa is a Yugoslav national, not Albanian. She was born in Belgrade and Ms. Spink should check her geography a bit more carefully.

To dismiss her true place of birth is just bad journalism.

If Ms. Spink was of born in the USA from Irish decendants, would she be Irish?