Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same
List by Danielle
Quote by Pearl S. Buck
Secret daughter : a mixed-race daughter and the mother who gave her away
by SJune Cross
920.5 CRO
"No childhood is simple. But June Cross's was perilous teetering on the brink of a racial divide. She was born in 1954 to Norma Booth, a glamorous aspiring white actress, and James "Stump" Cross, a well-known black comedian. They soon parted, and mother and daughter lived together in New York City until June was four. When it became clear that the dark-skinned, kinky-haired child could no longer "pass" as white, Norma sent June to live with a black family in Atlantic City, New Jersey. But Norma could never quite let her daughter go, and her daughter's struggle with this ambivalence forms the core of this memoir." "Both mother's and daughter's longing, shame, and confusion kept June shuttling between worlds. Against the roiling background of the sixties and seventies, June struggled with her identity as the black radicalism of the era collided head-on with her adopted family's more traditional middle-class ideals. She spent summers with Norma, now in Hollywood and married to a successful television actor, passing as her mother's adopted daughter. Norma feared that her husband's career would suffer if anyone knew about her illegitimate daughter. Instructed to tell no one the truth back in Atlantic City, June kept her identity to herself. When, as an adult, June decided to make her secret public, she risked severing her relationship with her mother forever and alienating the only family she had ever known." "Secret Daughter is a story about race and class that moves across forty years of delicate, often painful negotiation. It is a story about the strength it takes to keep a secret and the courage required to reveal it - and how revealing one's deepest fears can lead to happy endings."--BOOK JACKET.
The mistress's daughter
by A. M. Homes
362.8298 HOM
Before A.M. Homes was born, she was put up for adoption. Her birth mother was a twenty-two- year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man with children of his own. The Mistress's Daughter is the story of what happened when, thirty years later, her birth parents came looking for her. Homes tells how her birth parents initially made contact with her and what happened afterward (her mother stalked her and appeared unannounced at a reading) and what she was able to reconstruct about the story of their lives and their families. Her birth mother, a complex and lonely woman, never married or had another child, and died of kidney failure in 1998; her birth father, who initially made overtures about inviting her into his family, never did. Then the story jumps forward several years to when Homes opens the boxes of her mothers memorabilia. She had hoped to find her mother in those boxes, to know her secrets, but no relief came. She became increasingly obsessed with finding out as much as she could about all four parents and their families, hiring researchers and spending hours poring through newspaper morgues, municipal archives and genealogical Web sites.
Traveling with pomegranates : a mother-daughter story
by Sue Monk Kidd & Ann Kidd Taylor
920.7 KID
In this dual memoir, Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann chronicle their travels together, and offer their distinct perspectives as a fifty-something and a twenty-something, each on a quest to redefine herself, and rediscover each other. Between 1998 and 2000, Sue and Ann travel together to sacred sites throughout Greece and France. Sue, newly aware of aging, is caught in a creative vaccuum, and longing to reconnect with her now grown daughter; Ann, just graduated from college, is heartbroken and wondering what to do with her life as she grapples with a painful depression.
Not becoming my mother : and other things she taught me along the way
by Ruth Reichl
926.415 REI
"Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl learned one important lesson from her brilliant mother, who wanted to become a doctor: don't languish as a housewife."--Global Books in Print.
Bending toward the sun : a mother and daughter memoir
by Leslie Gilbert-Laurie with Rita Lurie
920.7 GIL
Bending Toward the Sun explores an emotional legacyforged in the terror of the Holocaustthat has shaped three generations of lives. Leslie Gilbert-Lurie tells the story of her mother, Rita, who like Anne Frank spent years hiding from the Nazis, and whose long-hidden pain shaped both her daughter and granddaughters lives. Bringing together the stories of three generations of women, Bending Toward the Sun reveals how deeply the Holocaust lives in the hearts and minds of survivors and their descendants.
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