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matthewwester's review against another edition
5.0
4.5 stars. This book is powerful -- it's the author's raw, aching attempt to understand the complexity of a challenging mother-daughter relationship. While at it, she also explores the strange hurts that can occur in mentor-student relationships.
This book is a combination of poem and memoir. I've never read anything like it. I'm not sure how I feel about those final pages of the book (the letter and the epilogue). Very intense. Overall a great read.
This book is a combination of poem and memoir. I've never read anything like it. I'm not sure how I feel about those final pages of the book (the letter and the epilogue). Very intense. Overall a great read.
foggy_rosamund's review against another edition
5.0
I've found in this book extremely helpful frameworks for looking at memory and trauma: though Zucker is talking about motherhood and childbirth, the same examples work for other kinds of trauma or memory lapses. Writing in the elliptical style I call "poetry-essay", somewhat similar in form to Nelson's "The Argonauts" or Rakin's "Citizen", this selection of pieces describes Zucker's fraught relationship with her mother, a well-known writer, and her relations to other female mentors, including the poet Jorie Graham, and Zucker's own relationship to motherhood and writing. Though it's self-referential, and, in places, self-indulgent, I found this book moving, inspiring, and genuinely helpful in my understanding of myself and how I relate to a memory that is fractured due to trauma. I picked this book out of the poetry section at the library without any prior knowledge of it or its author: I'm so glad I did, because it's been moving, inspiring and surprising. I want to buy a copy for my own reference, and also foist this on various of my loved ones.
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