Mothers and Daughters: An Anthology

by Alberto Manguel

How does modern fiction approach the fierce yet tender nature of mother-daughter relationships? In Mothers & Daughters , editor Alberto Manguel has collected 20 compelling short stories that reveal mothers through the eyes of their daughters, and vice versa. In "Mama," Bastard Out of Carolina author Dorothy Allison's moving tribute to her mother, Allison reflects on her mother's life by remembering the physical details of her mother's body and comparing them to her "Nothing marks me so much her daughter as my hands--the way they are aging, the veins coming up through skin already thin. I tell myself they are beautiful as they recreate my mama's flesh in mine." Sara Jeannette Duncan's "A Mother in India" questions the biological bond between mother and daughter. And in "Lolita," Dorothy Parker turns her usual sardonic eye to a social butterfly mother and her drab, shapeless daughter who ends up winning the chisel-jawed heartthrob. In Bonnie Burchard's "Women of Influence" a grown daughter becomes the go-between for two sisters--her dying mother and her dying "I realize I have not been asked to bring my mother's forgiveness here. Or have I? Is my mother counting on me to pass it on or to live with it? I don't want her compromised." Each unique, lovely story has elements that will resonate with mothers and daughters everywhere. --Ericka Lutz

Genres: Anthologies, Short Stories

359 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 1998

About the author

Alberto Manguel (born 1948 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (co-written with Gianni Guadalupi in 1980) and A History of Reading (1996) The Library at Night (2007) and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008), and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came (1991).

Manguel believes in the central importance of the book in societies of the written word where, in recent times, the intellectual act has lost most of its prestige. Libraries (the reservoirs of collective memory) should be our essential symbol, not banks. Humans can be defined as reading animals, come into the world to decipher it and themselves.

Reviews

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am now older than my mother was when she died. I wish I could have her back. Funny, but I seem to understand now what I didn't understand then about what it means to be a daughter...and a mother. I loved this selection of stories. They expressed much about how complicated this relationship is.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Refreshing free of any sappy sentimentality.

Also added quite a few authors to my TBR.

[Karen F. · Rating 1 out of 5]

An anthology about horrible mothers and their "victim" daughters. It was a gift so I felt compelled to finish it.