Framing a Life: A Family Memoir - Hardcover

Ferraro, Geraldine A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 068485404X ISBN 13: 9780684854045

Publisher: Scribner, 1998

Synopsis

Written by the first woman nominated for Vice President of the United States, this heartwarming personal story of four Italian-American women looks back on the lives of the author's mother and grandmother and ahead at the future of her two daughters. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

When the mother of former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro was in the hospital with emphysema, she was asked for her educational history. She replied that she'd graduated from elementary school, "Big deal, huh?" she shrugged, embarrassed. Realizing her hardworking immigrant mother's feelings of shame, Ferraro determined to write a tribute to her life, "to correct," she tells readers, "my mother's impression of herself as no big deal, and also to correct the nation's dismissal of the contribution of immigrant women."

Ferraro's obvious admiration for her mother, the daughter of Italian immigrants to New York, marks every chapter of this paean to maternal fortitude and sacrifice. Ferraro describes the close bond between the two women, her mother's determination to ensure the prosperous future of her children, and the daughter's sometimes amusingly protective attitudes toward her aging mother. Nevertheless, the anecdotes in this book hang not on the frame of her mother's life, but on the author's own. The details of Ferraro's schooling, her family life as mother and wife, and her rise to political prominence as Walter Mondale's running mate in the 1984 presidential elections offer proof that the elder Ferraro's sacrifice was, in fact, worth quite a lot. --Maria Dolan

About the Author:

Geraldine A. Ferraro served as a U.S. representative from Queens, New York, before she was selected in 1984 to be Walter Mondale's vice presidential running mate. She appeared as the cocommentator with Pat Buchanan on CNN's Crossfire and in January 1998 announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Her 1986 book, Ferraro: My Story, was a number one New York Times best-seller. She lives in New York and has three adult children and two grandchildren. She wrote this book with Catherine Whitney.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 068485404X
• ISBN 13: 9780684854045
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224