Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers

A cross-section of mothers, which leads to comparison with one's own...How some children--and adults--survive some circumstances is amazing. I can appreciate my own Mom much, much more.

There is no bigger influence in a girl's life than her mother. "Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers" is an anthology of twenty-one pieces from women writers discussing the enigmas that are their mothers. Be it simple wisdom such as cooking or skill to win at scrabble every single time, these stories of mothers are heartwarming and charming, and will bring a smile to the face of any reader. "Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers" is deftly compiled and highly recommended for community library women's studies collections.

Riding Shotgun is a remarkably honest and truly heartening gathering of essays, demonstrating with clarity and force the myriad ways that mothers and daughters share love and lives. But you needn't be a mother or a daughter - only human - to recognize what's universal in these painful, redemptive, wise, and often sweetly comic essays. This is simply a wonderful collection!

This book is an excellent collection of essays from women who grew up in very different situations, and with very different relationships with their mothers. Read this book with your mother and/or your sister; it's bound to strike a chord.

Women are from Venus. Women's Intuition. The Feminine Mystique. Whatever you want to call it, women have a different kind of sensitivity and power from their Y-chromosomed counterparts, and that perception may be the most finely tuned with regard to one's mother. "We know things, my sisters assure me. We know the future. No, sometimes we know the future, I caution. My dead sister knew who was calling before she picked up the phone. I know when a person is moving toward me across time and place. I think of them and they come back into my life. What does all this mean? I ask my mother. What have you done to us?" --from Jonis Agee's "Storm Warnings" That's just one of the things you'll experience firsthand reading Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers [Borealis Books], a series of personal essays edited by Kathryn Kysar. To rise into and assume the mantle of womanhood means different things to different women, but one thing is clear: no one gets through it without a few scratches--and if you're lucky, some good advice, a proud example, and maybe a few hugs and kisses-- from Mommy. Just in time for Mother's Day, Riding Shotgun is a different kind of celebration. Grown women from all kinds of backgrounds take a literary look at this intense, sometimes frightening, intimidating, funny, and at best, loving universal relationship between daughters and their mothers. You'll find true-tales from great contemporary writers such as Sandra Benitez, Tai Coleman, Alison McGhee, Susan Steger Welsh, Denise Low, Susan Power, Carrie Pomeroy, and many others. Reading more like short stories than essays trying to preach anything, Riding Shotgun examines women--and humanity-- in a fresh way. No need for sentimental sweet greeting card poetry, or teary apple-pie baking puppy dog tales. This is a new age, a great mix of culture, and a celebration of uniquely feminine power, as daughters, parents, caregivers, cooks, gardeners, friends, victims, bullies, crazy people and everything in between. Because after all, why be cliché? We're different. Aren't you glad? Kathryn Kysar, the author of Dark Lake, teaches writing in Minneapolis. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Norcroft, the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts. [...]