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Deep South Books
All the Lost Girls: Confessions of a Southern Daughter
Winner of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award
Patricia Foster’s lyrical yet often painful memoir explores the life of a white middle-class girl who grew up in rural south Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s, a time and place that did not tolerate deviation from traditional gender roles. Her mother raised Foster and her sister as “honorary boys,” girls with the ambition of men but the temperament of women.
An unhappy, intelligent woman who kept a heartbreaking secret from everyone close to her, Foster's mother was driven by a repressed rage that fed her obsession for middle-class respectability. By the time Foster reached age fifteen, her efforts to reconcile the contradictory expectations that she be at once ambitious and restrained had left her nervous and needy inside even while she tried to cultivate the appearance of the model student, sister, and daughter. It was only a psychological and physical breakdown that helped her to realize that she couldn't save her driven, complicated mother and must struggle instead for both understanding and autonomy.
Patricia Foster’s lyrical yet often painful memoir explores the life of a white middle-class girl who grew up in rural south Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s, a time and place that did not tolerate deviation from traditional gender roles. Her mother raised Foster and her sister as “honorary boys,” girls with the ambition of men but the temperament of women.
An unhappy, intelligent woman who kept a heartbreaking secret from everyone close to her, Foster's mother was driven by a repressed rage that fed her obsession for middle-class respectability. By the time Foster reached age fifteen, her efforts to reconcile the contradictory expectations that she be at once ambitious and restrained had left her nervous and needy inside even while she tried to cultivate the appearance of the model student, sister, and daughter. It was only a psychological and physical breakdown that helped her to realize that she couldn't save her driven, complicated mother and must struggle instead for both understanding and autonomy.
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
328 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 29, 2017
Memoir of woman growing up in Foley, Alabama during the 50s-60s-first generation middle class and the pressures of trying to measure up to society’s standards.
May 16, 2018
Guess this was a re-read, though I didn't recall having read before. Author tells of growing up in Alabama. Descriptions well written, visual.
November 25, 2018
Ugh. This all I have to say.
March 14, 2024
Decent writing, but somehow not captivating.
January 16, 2010
This was one of my discussion group books. It was an "ok" read, but not especially memorable. I felt the author continued the memoir for entirely too long, well past her girlhood. "Liar's Club" did a better job of exploring this terrain.
July 29, 2008
My professor.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews