Full Description
In My Mother's House depicts a profound, intergenerational struggle between a powerful, politically engaged mother, Rose, and her spiritually inclined poet and writer daughter, Kim. Framing this collision are two other generations. There is Rose's mother from the shtetl, a broken woman regularly beaten by her husband but the source of the family's stories. And Kim's daughter, a second-generation, fully assimilated girl of eight at the time the book begins. Four generations, from the shtetl to an affluent intellectual household in Berkeley, California, the story is a historical record and reckoning between the old activist left and a beginning feminist movement. The double narrative allows Kim to explore the evolving relationship between mother and daughter, who, through their storytelling, are brought to a profound understanding and reconciliation.
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Part One: Wasn't I Once Also a Daughter?
The Proposal
The First Story My Mother Tells
Childhood in Russia (1903-1914)
Oy, My Enlightenment
The Second Story My Mother Tells
Do This for Me, Rose
The Third Story My Mother Tells
A Larger World (1920-1928)
Three Sisters
The Fourth Story My Mother Tells
I Fight for My Mother (1928-1932)
Wasn't I Once Also a Daughter?
Part Two: The Almond Giver
She Comes to Visit
The Fifth Story My Mother Tells
Motherland (1932-1934)
A Walk in the Woods
The Sixth Story My Mother Tells
The Organizer (1934-1938)
The Rose Garden
The Seventh Story My Mother Tells
Letters (1938-1940)
The Almond Giver
The Eighth Story My Mother Tells
A Birth and a Death (1940-1946)
Part Three: The Survivor
414 East 204th Street
The Crossroads
The First Story I Tell
Hard Times (1947-1952)
Take a Giant Step
The Second Story I Tell
A Communist Childhood (1952-1957)
A Knock at the Door
The Third Story I Tell
Motherland Revisited (1957-1967)
What Remains
Epilogue
