An American Childhood
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"An American Childhood more than takes the reader's breath away. It consumes you as you consume it, so that, when you have put down this book, you're a different person, one who has virtually experienced another childhood." — Chicago Tribune
A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s and 60s.
Dedicated to her parents—from whom she learned a love of language and the importance of following your deepest passions—this brilliant coming-of-age memoir captures a girl’s intellectual awakening with a vividness that will resonate with anyone who has ever recalled with longing playing baseball on an endless summer afternoon, caring for a pristine rock collection, or knowing in your heart that a book was written just for you.
It is a time and place captured with unforgettable clarity—a world built from moments of both breathtaking wonder and startling discovery.
A Vivid Mid-Century Childhood: Step into the streets, backyards, and leafy neighborhoods of 1950s Pittsburgh, a world of snowball fights, terrifying nuns, and the startling beauty of a girl skating alone under a streetlight.A Mind in the Making: Follow a young girl’s journey of discovery as she unravels the world through library books on everything from microbe hunting to rock collecting, finding the universe in a drop of pond water.Unforgettable Family Stories: Meet a father who quits his job to chase a dream down the Mississippi, and a mother who teaches her daughters to question everything—a family full of wit, love, and complexity.Literary Nonfiction Masterpiece: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, this beautifully written memoir is a profound exploration of what it means to be awake and alive in the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dillard's luminous prose painlessly captures the pain of growing up in this wonderful evocation of childhood. Her memoir is partly a hymn to Pittsburgh, where orange streetcars ran on Penn Avenue in 1953 when she was eight, and where the Pirates were always in the cellar. Dillard's mother, an unstoppable force, had energies too vast for the bridge games and household chores that stymied her. Her father made low-budget horror movies, loved Dixieland jazz, told endless jokes and sight-gags and took lonesome river trips down to New Orleans to get away. From this slightly odd couple, Dillard (Teaching a Stone to Talk acquired her love of nature and taut sensitivity. The events of childhood often loom larger than life; the magic of Dillard's writing is that she sets down typical childhood happenings with their original immediacy and force.
