My Mother's Ghost


Book Description

A luminous memoir of how the author's involvement in his mother's accidental death reshaped the emotional landscape of his childhood and adult life. In 1962, at the age of fourteen, Fergus Bordewich's life was shattered as his mother attempted to jump off a runaway horse and fell calamitously under the galloping hooves of the horse Fergus was riding. Crouching beside her in a gathering pool of blood, he convinced himself that she would be fine. But an hour later, in the hospital waiting room, he and his father listened in shock as the doctor told them that she had been dead on arrival. At that moment, he thought to himself, I've killed my mother. So begins My Mother's Ghost, veteran reporter Fergus Bordewich's anguished attempt to come to terms with the emotional chaos his life was thrown into with his mother's death. For all practical purposes, Fergus's childhood was over. His mother, a fierce, fireball of a woman, had been the dominant figure not just in his family, but, as the executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs, a galvanizing force in national politics behind Native American activism and tribal rights. She was a woman who traveled the country meeting with tribal chiefs and regularly dined with senators and congressmen. And Fergus had been the son she doted on. In the aftermath of her death, his father slipped further into alcoholism and silence. In the decade that followed, Fergus would follow his father into a life of despair and drink. By the age of twenty-seven, he was close to suicide. A devastating and beautifully written account of Bordewich's attempt to make peace with his mother's death and rediscover her place in his heart, MyMother's Ghost is a poignant and heartrending memoir that, like Angela's Ashes, is neither easily put down nor readily forgotten.




The Blood of My Mother


Book Description

“Lonesome Dove meets Where the Crawdads Sing” in this “gripping saga about a perilous time in our nation’s history and a woman who survived it against all odds” (Patricia Wood, author of Lottery, shortlisted for the 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction). “I could not stop reading.” —Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times–bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean, the inaugural choice of Oprah’s Book Club After the deaths of her white father and mixed-race mother, young Eliza is left with neither home nor family in the newly forming frontier of Texas. After enduring unimaginable cruelty as a slave, Eliza escapes, marries, becomes a mother, and realizes her dream of having a small farm. But she must fight—and kill—to keep it. And survival means welcoming others who have been shunned or forgotten by society into her world. Living and laboring together, will these outcasts find the strength and community they need to survive and flourish? Acclaimed author Roccie Hill, inspired by the story of her great-great grandmother, now presents an unforgettable, deeply research, and wildly popular historical saga of a woman and a place, each growing and enduring under multiple flags through the sorrows and turbulence of history. “A saga with many layers . . . [A] riveting, addictive journey.” —Joanne Hardy, author of The Girl in the Butternut Dress “Robbed by fate and evil-doers of everything except her ferocious spirit, Eliza fights for her own space in the pitiless frontier that will become the state of Texas. Combining lyrical prose and non-stop action, Roccie Hill conjures an unforgettable character, based loosely on her own great-great grandmother, who somehow triumphs over nearly unthinkable privations. Hill’s Eliza springs to life as a true American original.” —Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean, the inaugural choice of Oprah’s Book Club “Lonesome Dove meets Where the Crawdads Sing. I simply could not put this novel down. Vividly written, The Blood of My Mother is a gripping saga about a perilous time in our nation’s history and a woman who survived it against all odds. It is a novel about how love and hope transcend man’s inhumanity to man. I was pulled deeply into the story and was held there until the very last page.” —Patricia Wood, author of Lottery, shortlisted for the 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction




Blood of My Blood


Book Description

Thought to be lost forever, the first novel of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Yearling portrays the life of a young artist caught in a destructive relationship with her overprotective mother. (General Fiction)




My Mother


Book Description

In her 10th novel, Acker's heroine, Laurie, is a woman helpless before the fury of her emotions. Love-obsessed, Laurie is plunged into a harrowing dilemma--sexuality and her feminism are the two poles that threaten to obliterate her inner poise, the false magic of her woman's identity.




The Autobiography of My Mother


Book Description

From the recipient of the 2010 Clifton Fadiman Medal, an unforgettable novel of one woman's courageous coming-of-age Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother is a story of love, fear, loss, and the forging of a character, an account of one woman's inexorable evolution evoked in startling and magical poetry. Powerful, disturbing, stirring, Jamaica Kincaid's novel is the deeply charged story of a woman's life on the island of Dominica. Xuela Claudette Richardson, daughter of a Carib mother and a half-Scottish, half-African father, loses her mother to death the moment she is born and must find her way on her own. Kincaid takes us from Xuela's childhood in a home where she could hear the song of the sea to the tin-roofed room where she lives as a schoolgirl in the house of Jack Labatte, who becomes her first lover. Xuela develops a passion for the stevedore Roland, who steals bolts of Irish linen for her from the ships he unloads, but she eventually marries an English doctor, Philip Bailey. Xuela's is an intensely physical world, redolent of overripe fruit, gentian violet, sulfur, and rain on the road, and it seethes with her sorrow, her deep sympathy for those who share her history, her fear of her father, her desperate loneliness. But underlying all is "the black room of the world" that is Xuela's barrenness and motherlessness.




Blood Mother


Book Description

'A truly original voice' Peter James Dreda Say Mitchell was awarded an MBE in Her Majesty The Queen's 2020 New Year's Honours List BOOK 2 in the FLESH AND BLOOD series, BLOOD MOTHER shifts to the 70s to tell the troubled tale of one East London family. Perfect for fans of Kimberley Chambers, Martina Cole and Mandasue Heller 1970s London has stopped swinging, but it's not staying still. Babs thought she had all the world ahead of her. Then she got pregnant and the father did a runner. Salvation comes in the form of a man who'll look after her. Or so she thinks. But Stan Miller is the devil in disguise...and over the next twenty years, Babs will have reason to regret she ever met him. Can she protect her family - or will he get the better of her? The second thrilling book in the FLESH AND BLOOD series, BLOOD MOTHER captures a different world from today. But some things still hold true: be careful what you wish for, and watch out for who you trust . . . ********** Praise for Blood Mother 'I love what I call a grit lit read and there are a few authors books I can always count on to deliver my fix, Dreda Say Mitchell is one of them' The Book Review Cafe 'If you love the gritty, in your face, raw and real writing of authors like Martina Cole, Kimberley Chambers, Mel Sherratt and Casey Kelleher, you will LOVE Dreda Say Mitchell!' Goodreads reviewer 'Another blinder of book here, and it so deserves every single one of the 5*s I'm giving it' Vicki - I Love Reading ********** Discover the FLESH AND BLOOD series: Book 1: Blood Sister Book 2: Blood Mother Book 3: Blood Daughter Book 4: Blood Secrets One False Move (Quick Read novella)




Are You My Mother?


Book Description

The New York Times–bestselling graphic memoir about Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home, becoming the artist her mother wanted to be. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood…and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers. A New York Times, USA Today, Time, Slate, and Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year “As complicated, brainy, inventive and satisfying as the finest prose memoirs.”—New York Times Book Review “A work of the most humane kind of genius, bravely going right to the heart of things: why we are who we are. It's also incredibly funny. And visually stunning. And page-turningly addictive. And heartbreaking.”—Jonathan Safran Foer “Many of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers. Alison Bechdel has written a graphic novel about this; sort of like a comic book by Virginia Woolf. You won't believe it until you read it—and you must!”—Gloria Steinem




A Song for My Mother


Book Description

In the tradition of "The Christmas Clock, New York Times"-bestselling author Martin takes readers back to the charming town of Dreyersville in another compelling story of love, loss, and the hope in second chances.




My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter


Book Description

I am 27 and have never killed a man but I know the face of death as if heirloom my country memorizes murder as lullaby —from “For Fahd” Textured with the sights and sounds of growing up in East New York in the nineties, to school on the South Side of Chicago, all the way to the olive groves of Palestine, My Mother Is a Freedom Fighter is Aja Monet’s ode to mothers, daughters, and sisters—the tiny gods who fight to change the world. Complemented by striking cover art from Carrie Mae Weems, these stunning poems tackle racism, sexism, genocide, displacement, heartbreak, and grief, but also love, motherhood, spirituality, and Black joy. Praise for Aja Monet: ““[Monet] is the true definition of an artist.” —Harry Belafonte ““In Paris, she walked out onto the stage, opened her mouth and spoke. At the first utterance I heard that rare something that said this is special and knew immediately that Aja Monet was one of the Ones who will mark the sound of the ages. She brings depth of voice to the voiceless, and through her we sing a powerful song.” —Carrie Mae Weems Of Cuban-Jamaican descent, Aja Monet is an internationally established poet, performer, singer, songwriter, educator, and human rights advocate. Monet is also the youngest person to win the legendary Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title.




What My Mother and I Don't Talk About


Book Description

“You will devour these beautifully written—and very important—tales of honesty, pain, and resilience” (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls) from fifteen brilliant writers who explore how what we don’t talk about with our mothers affects us, for better or for worse. As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. This gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything. As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” There’s relief in acknowledging how what we couldn’t say for so long is a way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves. Contributions by Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.




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