Mama's Girl - Softcover

Chambers, Veronica

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573225991 ISBN 13: 9781573225991

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1997

Synopsis

On the streets of Brooklyn in the 1970s, Veronica Chambers mastered the whirling helixes of a double-dutch jump rope with the same finesse she brought to her schoolwork, her often troubled family life, and the demands of being overachieving and underprivileged. Her mother—a Panamanian immigrant—was too often overwhelmed by the task of raising Veronica and her difficult younger brother on her meager secretary's salary to applaud her daughter's achievements. From an early age, Veronica understood that the best she could do for her mother was to be a perfect child—to rewrite her Christmas wish lists to her mother's budget, to look after her brother, to get by on her own.

Though her mother seemed to bear out the adage that "black women raise their daughters and mother their sons," Veronica never stopped trying to do more, do better, do it all. And now, as a successful young woman who's achieved more than her mother dared hope for her, she looks back on their mother-daughter bond. The critically acclaimed Mama's Girl is a moving, startlingly honest memoir, in which Chambers shares some important truths about what we all really want from our mothers—and what we can give in return.

About this title

Review

Chambers, an editor at Glamour, writes about the aftermath of the violent and explosive divorce between her Caribbean-born parents that tore her family apart. Chambers swore allegiance to her mother even though the anger her mother had accumulated from a destructive marriage and her frustration at her inability to move beyond a secretarial job was aimed mostly at Chambers. The author also suffered abuse at the hands of her father, stepfather and a stepmother. But instead of giving up, Chambers concentrated her energies on academics and making a better life for herself. Her compelling story is a testament to will, self-respect and the ability to forgive.

About the Author

Veronica Chambers is a prolific author, best known for her critically acclaimed memoir Mama's Girl. She coauthored the award-winning memoir Yes, Chef with chef Marcus Samuelsson, as well as Samuelsson's young-adult memoir Make It Messy, and has collaborated on four New York Times bestsellers, most recently 32 Yolks, which she cowrote with chef Eric Ripert. She has been a senior editor at the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and Glamour. Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, she writes often about her Afro-Latina heritage. She speaks, reads, and writes Spanish, but she is truly fluent in Spanglish. She is currently a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University. Her upcoming novel is The Go-Between.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1573225991
• ISBN 13: 9781573225991
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208