Motherland Quotes

“Like the Centralia Mine Fire, my mother and I have been burning for half a century.”
― Elissa Altman, Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing

“Do I have the permission to succeed at this? Who am I to tell my stories?

“Who are you to not tell them?” a writer friend said to me. This writer friend — author of novels, memoirs, a short story collection — tells me that it is ownership, the acceptance of the fact that our stories make us who we are, that is the most complicated and treacherous part of what we do. When that ownership is withheld, we cannot succeed. When other forces say, no, that story is not yours, they have not only killed it and its place in your soul; they have killed you.”
― Elissa Altman, Motherland: A Memoir of Love, Loathing, and Longing