Mirror Mirror: A Collection of Memoirs and Stories - Softcover

Stephanie Hart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0615498086 ISBN 13: 9780615498089

Publisher: And Then Press, 2012

Synopsis

Mirror Mirror A Collection of Memoirs and Stories, Stephanie Hart’s third book, is composed of a series of fast-paced vignettes that explore her childhood, youth, family, and ancestral background through a mix of real and imagined memories and events. She recounts and interprets the unique details of her own life, bringing to life the personalities and experiences of various relatives and friends in an intimate, heartbreaking, and often humorous manner. Her rich prose is evocative and poetic, yet highly accessible and engaging. Her story becomes a window into many lives, lives most readers will find reflected in their own personal narratives, encouraging them to revisit and re-imagine their own family backgrounds. Seamlessly blending past and present, Stephanie takes us from Manhattan of the 1950s to Moscow and Odessa circa 1800s, where she imaginatively renders the lives of her grandparents and great grandparents, and then takes us into the twenty-first century. She bares her soul by inviting readers into her world: her magical and unsettling early childhood by the sea, her years spent as the only Jewish girl in a Presbyterian boarding school, her urban high school years during which conflict with her mercurial and charismatic mother reaches a crescendo, and the weight of her father’s anger and unrealized dreams press down upon her. While acknowledging the mirror of the past, she shows us the love and friendship reflected in her current life, celebrating the generative power of each moment to transform experience. Mirror Mirror is beautifully enhanced with well-preserved photographs of Stephanie Hart’s family. These expressive images allow us to experience the climate of other times and places as if we had been there ourselves.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Is it too risky to let life happen moment by moment?

That night at our ryokan, a small traditional, Japanese hotel on a narrow street in Kyoto, I lay awake on my tatami mat, letting the ancient and modern spirit of Japan wash over me. I thought about my connection to my own past. I wondered if the fierce determination of my grandfather and great grandfather that propelled them to leave Russia during a time of Jewish persecution and make a new life in America lived inside me. I wondered if my mother's creative spirit now belonged to me along with my father's dreams of achievement. I wondered how I could find my own path to enlightenment, allowing me to embrace life and face death with courage and equanimity. I wondered how I could continue to grow in love and tolerance so that my friendships could flourish and David and I could remain life partners. I wondered how the intuitive sense of what I thought and felt could become louder than any other voice. I realized that I didn't have the answers to many of these questions. I also knew that I would continue to ask them.

In prose vignettes as distilled as poetry, Stephanie Hart explores and re-imagines her own life and lives of her parents and ancestors. The voice is gently watchful but unflinching. Each piece has a complex and emotional dream quality; a density and an echo.
--Regina McBride, Author of The Nature of Water and Air and the Marriage Bed

In Stephanie Hart's sensual, evocative and compelling memoir, arranged as a series of lyrical, quicksilver vignettes, the language is exquisite and the past and present seamlessly merge. Hart deftly renders the particular sorrows and raptures, the agonies and epiphanies, and the desires and loves of her narrator, so that they become unequivocally and gloriously universal.
--Janice Eidus, Author of The War of the Rosens

About the Author

Stephanie Hart teaches writing at The Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons the New School for Design in New York City. Her third book, Mirror Mirror: A Collection of Memoirs and Stories expands upon the series of fast paced vignettes presented in Clouds Like Horses and Other Stories. She is also the author of a young adult fiction novel, Is There Any Way Out of Sixth Grade? Stephanie’s essays and short stories have appeared in anthologies such as Mondo James Dean, The Best Stories from ducts.org, and literary magazines including The Sun, Jewish Currents, And Then, and ducts.org.

Edition details

• Publisher: And Then Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0615498086
• ISBN 13: 9780615498089
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 236