American Daughter
Discovering My Mother
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- 5,99 €
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- 5,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
In this beautifully crafted book, Elizabeth Kendall tells the story of a family, of a passionate attachment between a mother and a daughter and the sudden tragedy that tears it apart. American Daughter is also a brilliant portrait of wellborn women's lives in cities and towns in the post-World War II era, as Kendall evokes how difficult it was to become anything other than an American daughter, which meant being a dependent woman.
Occupying a coveted place in St. Louis's privileged high society, Henry and Betty Kendall seemed to be the American dream come true: six children, a sprawling house, a legacy of higher education at Harvard and Vassar. Yet underneath lay the flawed marriage of an idealistic young woman who made her eldest daughter her best friend and turned civil rights into her salvation. Elizabeth maintained the family silence as eccentricities began to appear in her father's behavior, along with whispers of financial difficulties. She accompanied her mother back to Vassar for a summer program on the home and family, then came into her own, away from her family, at the haven of a girls' summer camp and at Radcliffe. From the war-torn 1940s, when young men in uniform, home on leave, went to debutante parties, through the seismic social changes of the 1960s, Kendall tells the intertwined story of her mother and herself, of their powerful bond and how both shaped their lives in response to it.
Unrelentingly honest, rich with humor and insights into families and women's lives, American Daughter is both a poignant portrait of American life at the middle of the twentieth century, and a dual coming-of-age story of a mother and a daughter, united by commitment and love, separated by a fatal accident-and by the vastly different birthrights of their generations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The oldest of six children, Kendall was so close to her mother that she could say: "We confused each other about where one of us started and the other ended." This extraordinary emotional bond was abruptly severed in 1969, when her mother was killed in an automobile accident. Kendall, the driver, and her younger siblings survived. Spurred by her own aging and an anguished love affair some 20 years later to come to terms with the guilt and grief that have dogged her since the accident, the dance critic and historian (Where She Danced) began this beautifully realized memoir. The story of her parents' courtship and marriage takes place in St. Louis, from the 1940s through the 1960s, where both parents were members of socially prominent families. Based on her mother's diaries and interviews with family and friends, Kendall re-creates what was, to her, an oddly flawed relationship. Country club wife, caring mother and respectful daughter, her mother sought to find a self apart from her marriage as a social activist. Her father, unsuccessful at starting his own business, had to rely on family connections to find work. Unlike his serious-minded, socially conscious wife, Kendall's father was sardonic and temperamental, finding refuge from his family in his solitary hobby of falconry. With affecting honesty, she describes the birth of her younger sister, Faith, and her mother's intense grief when the brain-damaged child was institutionalized. Kendall's portrait of her mother is both a loving tribute to a woman who transcended the stereotypical role of housewife as well as a fascinating record of a mid-20th-century American woman's life.
