The essays exhibit varying degrees of nostalgia, grief (most of the mothers having died by the time of the writing), celebration, and revelation together they underscore the complexity of relationships-no mother is all good or all bad, neither angelic nor beyond the possibility of redemption, either in life or in a daughter’s reconstructed interpretation. The impressive lineup of novelists, poets, columnists, journalists, and essayists includes both a National Book Award and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, a US poet laureate, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic, a television producer, and a civil rights activist. Here, thirty-one women writers spanning five generations essay their way into the stories of their relationships with their mothers, with a particular present serving as the writer’s muse. In the book’s case, a single gift has the ability to tell the story of two lives: mother and daughter. “A single gift can easily tell the story of an entire life,” writes Elizabeth Benedict, editor of and contributor to the anthology What My Mother Gave Me. Thirty-One Women on the Gifts That Mattered MostĪlgonquin Books of Chapel Hill ( Apr 2, 2013)
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