In My Mother's House: A Memoir($11.42Value)

Description

In this twentieth anniversary edition of the feminist classic In My Mother’s House, Kim Chernin tells the brave and ultimately triumphant story of Rose Chernin, Russian immigrant and passionate Old Left activist, and her daughter Kim, the narrator of this riveting memoir of conflict, confrontation, and reconciliation among four generations of Chernin women. In My Mother's House is more than a story about four generations of women; more than a documentation of communism, socialist idealism, and its subsequent disillusionment; more than proof of the existence of women who have struggled to fight for what they believed in with bravery and persistence. More than any of this, In My Mother's House is about healing. The book begins with conflict: Rose Chernin asks her daughter, Kim, to write down the story of Rose's life as a communist organizer. Through years of struggling with her own identity and her mother's ideal vision of her, Kim Chernin has separated herself from her mother, and she is wary of the project, not wanting to "face their secrets and silences" or "wake the family's ghosts." Her powerful and persistent mother persuades her, however, and with relaxed sentences that drift into stories of the past, Kim Chernin skillfully, colorfully, and with great affection brings us into the culture of Russian Jews. In the end, she finds writing down the pain in daring honesty allows growth, empathy, and finally understanding, and takes down the walls separating mother and daughter. And as Kim Chernin says "Tell me a story Mama," she is keeping alive a flame handed down to her, one that she will pass on to her own daughter. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14 . -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Gloria Bauermeister "This brave and thoughtful memoir is an artistic triumph that brings rich characters to life, while quickening the feelings that lie at the heart of every family s struggle." Newsday "A fascinating, rich, beautiful book A profound portrayal of the ever-changing, deepening relationship between mother, daughter, and eventually granddaughter." Tillie Olson "We have this book because Kim Chernin longed to know her mother, save an important life, and communicate her to the next generation (as well as the rest of us) .There are stories in this book that I will never forget." Grace Paley "Read In My Mother s House to know what it was like on the Left or as a teenage girl in the fifties, but read it more for its dazzling literary structure, its passionate intelligence, and its ferocious clarity." Louise Bernikow Kim Chernin is the author of numerous books of nonfiction and fiction, including Crossing the Border and Sex and Other Sacred Games (with Renate Stendhal), The Obsession, The Hungry Self, Reinventing Eve, and The Flame Bearers, and a collection of poetry, The Hunger Song. She lives in Berkeley, California, where she has a private consultation practice. Larissa has been taking books out of the bookshelves, stacking them up on the floor, overturning the stacks. She seems surprised at the crash as her face turns toward her grandmother, who nods conciliation, as she never did to me, the child of her anxious years. My grandmother could not adjust to the New World. I have heard this all my life. She was sent to a mental hospital. She attempted suicide. My mother would talk about the beautiful letters she wrote. "A Sholom Aleichem," my mother would say. "The most heartbreaking stories," my aunt echoed. Then she added, "She must have wanted to become a writer." She, too, was a dreamer and she lived through most of her days in that sorrow of mute protest which in her generation was known as melancholia. My mother, her daughter, was obsessed by the fate of her mother and this obsession has descended to me. But who could have imagined these old stories would awaken my child to an interest in the family? She is growing up, I say to myself, she is becoming conscious, my heart already stirred by the magnitude of this, she is entering the mythology of this family. The twilight comes into the room. It spreads itself out on the stacks of magazines, the lacquered Chinese dish, the little carved man with a blue patch in his wooden trousers. Everyone begins to look as if they have been brushed with understanding. For here finally is the clear shape of the story my mother wants me to write down this tale of four generations, immigrants who have come to take possession of a new world. It is a tale of transformation and development the female reversal of that patriarchal story in which the power of the family s founder is lost and dissipated as the inheriting generations decline and fall to ruin. A story of power. My mother has stopped talking. She raises her eyebrows, asking me to respond to her. Soon I know if I hold silence she will take a deep breath and straighten her shoulders. "Daughter," she will say, in a voice that is st