Mothers - by Katrina Kenison & Kathleen Hirsch (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This remarkable collection of twenty stories about motherhood by writers who are mothers evokes every stage of the journey, from pregnancy and birth through the childhood years, adolescence, and adulthood. Together they depict the complexity of mothering in America today as woman are actually experience it.

The works gathered here constitute a step toward a new mothers literature that puts to rest the long-held myth that has separated motherhood from a woman's creativity. In these pages women from all walks of life, single, married, divorced or just out of their teens and well into their eighties, rich and poor, black and white, grapple with the realities of motherhood - sacrifice and boundless joy, self-doubt and miracles of the every day. Whether you are a new mother, a seasoned mother, or a grandmother many times over you will find yourself in this book.

Contributors: Mary Grimm, Laurie Colwin, Perri Klass, Kate Braverman, Molly Giles, Mary Gordon, Ronnie Sandroff, Roxana Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Marian Thurm, Paula K. Gover, Marsha Lee Berkman, Melissa Pritchard, Jane Shapiro, Julia Whitty, Alice Elliott Dark, J. California Cooper, Sue Miller, Eileen Fitzgerald.

From the Back Cover

Ciaran Carson's Last Night's Fun is a sparkling celebration of Irish music and life that is itself a literary performance of the highest order. Each chapter takes the title of a traditional tune, and as in a session played by brilliant improvising musicians, each tune leads into another, melodies and variations weaving in and out in a haze of talk and memory. Carson's inspired jumble of recording history, poetry, tall tales, and polemic captures the sound and vigor of a ruthlessly unsentimental music. A leading Irish poet who is also an accomplished flute player, he tells of his Belfast childhood, of learning to play music, of his travels in Ireland and America, of poteen, pub life, and the special pleasure taken in a well-made Fry "the morning after the night before". Loosely interpreted standards, as Carson points out, achieve a special kind of profundity and resonance - a tune can never be played the same way twice - so this is also a book about the poignancy of lost airs, about music as "a way of renegotiating lost time" and recognizing mortality.

Review Quotes

"Transfiguring life into art, Barbara Kingsolver, Laurie Colwin, Mary Gordon, Sue Miller and Perri Klass are among the 20 writers, mothers all, who contribute stories--all previously published--to this well-chosen anthology about bearing or raising children." - Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Kathleen Hirsch is the author of Songs from the Alley and A Home in the Heart of the City. She lives with her family in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Katrina Kenison is the former series editor of The Best American Short Stories anthologies, and she is now an author and blogger. Her books include Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry.