Did My Mama Like to Dance?: And Other Stories About Mothers and Daughters - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380771012 ISBN 13: 9780380771011

Publisher: Avon Books, 1994

Synopsis

A collection of stories depicting different types of relationships between mothers and daughters by such writers as Shay Youngblood, Terry McMillan, Amy Tan, and Barbara Kingsolver

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The myth of the June Cleaver mother is challenged once again in this touching collection of 15 short stories. By illuminating the real women who raise daughters or write poetry or lose their husbands or lose their minds, these tales shatter the concept of the perfect mother. In her introduction, Kothari suggests that by recognizing mothers who do not "know how to flirt and smile winningly," we can accept those mothers who do not behave like "other mothers," and thus accept ourselves. In the most powerful story, Kate Braverman revises her childhood impression of her eccentric mother; instead of seeing her as an unstylish, alcoholic, poetry-writing failure who released her from shame by succumbing to breast cancer, she now sees her mother as a vulnerable, graceful, excitable woman who gave up a life of travel and adventure so that her daughter could lead a normal life in Beverly Hills ("She gave me back my life before I realized that it was not mine.") Barbara Kingsolver contemplates whether her mother was right when, finding the 16-year-old Kingsolver's birth-control pills, she declared "that early promiscuity would ruin me psychologically . . . that later in life I'd be unable to hold down a monogamous relationship." As an adult, Kingsolver only discovered the courage to break out of an unhappy marriage through an unlikely note from her 13-year-old daughter. These are not the mothers we think we know but the women we ought to.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal:

YA-Stories of women's relationships with their mothers are always appealing to female readers, and the short stories in this collection will be no exception. Mentally ill, eccentric, and "naughty" mothers; understanding and rejecting mothers; mothers who are being thrown lifelines by their daughters; daughters who must listen to their mothers in order to bridge the generation gap-all appear in this multicultural melange. Shay Youngblood, Terry McMillan, Amy Tan, and Barbara Kingsolver are among the contributors. This book treats adult themes but will be enjoyed by older teens.
Ginny Ryder, R.E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Avon Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0380771012
• ISBN 13: 9780380771011
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 172
• Editor: Kothari Geeta