Mothers

"A woman writing thinks back through her mothers." -Virginia Woolf "In this intensely emotional and fascinating collection of nonfiction, nineteen well-known women writers describe their mothers' influence on their lives and work. "Through her daughter's remembering eyes, we see Eudora Welty's mother challenging the rules of the local librarian in Jackson, Mississippi. We witness the profound compassion of Simone de Beauvoir while her mother lies dying. And in excerpt that together form a wonderful two-generational protrait, Margaret Mead sketches her mother's character; then her daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, remembers Margaret Mead, in particularr her mother's child-rearing practices and teaching of sexual morality. From the late-Victorian Dublin of Elizabeth Bowen, to Audre Lorde's Depression-era Harlem, to Faye Moskowitz's small-town Jackson, Michigan, these memoirs, essays, and letters vary widely in style and experience, but they echo one common theme: the strength and resilience of the mother-daughter bond...as unchanging and eternal as love itself."