Book Review and Giveaway of Because I Love Her, Edited by Andrea Richesin
Book giveaway closed; check this blog post for the winners and thanks for commenting.
In honor of Mother’s Day on Sunday, I have two copies to give away of this great new anthology about mothers and daughters called Because I Love Her, edited by Andrea Richesin. To enter, please check out my review and interview with the editor, then leave a comment at the end of this post by the end of the day Saturday telling us something you love about your mother or your daughter.
The mother-daughter bond is complex. As daughters, we may strive to be more like our mothers, or we may cast off both the implicit and explicit things our mothers taught us. As mothers, we may want different things for our daughters than we had growing up, and we may celebrate the diversity to be had through generations of women passing down their wisdom. No matter our relationships with our mothers, they almost always leave a gaping hole in our hearts when they are gone.
In her new anthology, Because I Love Her, editor Andrea N. Richesin weaves together a collection of essays by women writers who explore that mother-daughter relationship in all its complexities. The writers candidly talk about the effect their mothers had on their lives as well as their own hopes and aspirations for their daughters. They celebrate the emotional highs and lows that come from such intimate knowledge of each other—knowledge than can help to build us up or tear us down.
The collection includes essays written by well-known authors, such at Jacquelyn Mitchard, Joyce Maynard, Susan Wiggs and Karen Karbo., as well as emerging voices.
Because I Love Her may be most appropriate for a mother-daughter book club with daughters who are in high school, but even more, I think it’s a wonderful anthology to keep in your permanent library. I imagine pulling it off the shelf every few months to reread an essay or two. I plan to give a copy to my mother for Mother’s Day, and I’m also putting it on my gift list for many of my female friends. I highly recommend it.
Editor Nicki Richesin generously shared her time answering a few questions for readers at Mother Daughter Book Club. Here’s the interview:
How did you decide to put together an anthology of women writing about their mothers and daughters?
NR: After I had my daughter, I wanted to create a book about mothers and daughters and this fascinating, complicated relationship they share. I think after her birth, I finally recognized for the first time what it means to be a mother. A mother’s love means devotion, selflessness, sacrifice and of course, so much more. So I decided to ask my contributors “What would you tell your mother or daughter if you could tell her anything?” They’re so many things we’re not willing to say out loud or confess to ourselves. I thought wouldn’t it be freeing to finally confess them. For some of the contributors, it’s too late. Their mothers have passed away and they missed their chance. For them, writing their essays was really an opportunity to finally express how they felt about their mothers.
What were you looking for when seeking women to contribute essays?
NR: The short answer is: talent and the courage to share their private lives. I was lucky to have a network of writers to draw from in my first anthology THE MAY QUEEN. I approached a number of writers I had long admired and wanted to include in TMQ like Anne Marie Feld (I devotedly read her journal on Babycenter.com each week when I was pregnant with my own daughter) Tara Bray Smith (I adored her memoir West of Then) Katrina Onstad (I was a fan of her writing in the National Post) and Kaui Hart Hemmings (I gobbled up her short story collection and thought The Descendents was absolutely brilliant).
I was excited to feature new talents like Katherine Center and Lucia Orth. I also enjoyed working with heavyweights like Jacquelyn Mitchard, Karen Joy Fowler, and Susan Wiggs. It was very humbling and inspiring to work with all of the writers.
What would you say makes this collection of essays stand out?
NR: All of the contributors were incredibly brave in exposing intimate details from their personal lives. Although it wasn’t easy, and for some it was actually quite painful, they courageously share the truth of their own experiences. I think this anthology is a tribute to how difficult it can be to accept the ones we love the most. The thread that runs throughout the collection is this idea that despite our mothers’ best efforts- whatever they had to deal with- we remain hopeful for them, for our daughters, and ourselves.
There are so many aspects of mother-daughter relationships covered in Because I Love Her. Were you surprised that each writer had such a different perspective on the topic?
NR: Not at all. In fact, I had hoped to provide a vast array of perspectives. I would have been very disappointed if they had shared the same experiences. I wouldn’t say the content has surprised me, but the public’s reaction has floored me. Although I knew the writings are powerful, I was amazed by the audience’s response at our recent readings. I found it touching they were so deeply moved in this way by their work. One woman bravely shared how the anthology resonated with her. She confessed that her mother had been an alcoholic and she still felt trapped in her sixteen-year-old relationship with her- angry and confused. She broke down weeping with the memory of wanting so desperately to love her mother and it just proved once again how powerful this connection can truly be.
What are you most happy about in the way the collection came together?
NR: I’ve been absolutely thrilled by our readers’ response to the work and how moved they’ve been by it. It has been a great honor to work with such amazing writers and come to know a few of them personally. I really wanted to create a collection that showed the true nature of the mother-daughter bond and I think, in the end, I achieved that goal. I hope the book accomplishes two things. 1.) I hope women will discover who their mothers truly are and 2.) It will open a dialogue between mothers and daughters, especially estranged ones.
I understand you’re working on a father-daughter anthology. Can you tell us a bit about that and when we can expect to see it in print?
NR: WHAT I WOULD TELL HER: 30 MALE WRITERS ON THE FATHER-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP will be available May 2010, just in time for Father’s Day. I’ve been overwhelmed by the powerful writing I have read thus far. This father-daughter connection is so important to little girls in forming their own identities and of course, it sets the standard for all of their relationships with men going forward. I have seen this with my own daughter- how much she looks to my husband for guidance. In my mind, fathers are the most important men in their daughters’ lives. I think fathers feel a strong need to protect and defend their daughters- a warrior impulse, maybe. Men also worship their daughters in a very sweet and tender way.
Is there anything else you would like to share with readers of Mother-Daughter Book Club?
NR: When we did events in the San Francisco bay area, I saw firsthand how deeply this book has moved the readers. We’ve had readings, in which women were weeping and had to pass around a box of Kleenex. This is a stirring topic and can bring up unresolved issues for women. It can make them face their regrets, but also offers redemption. We all love our mothers, no matter what pressures they faced, we can forgive them and honor them this Mother’s Day. Thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts on the anthology with your readers!
Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies, Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; What I Would Tell Her: 30 Male Writers on the Father-Daughter Relationship (May 2010); the forthcoming Crush: Real-life Tales of First Love Gone Wrong by our Best Young Adult Novelists; and The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Redbook, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, Bust, Daily Candy, and Babble. She lives with her husband and daughter in northern California. For more about Nicki and her anthologies, visit www.nickirichesin.com.
Isn’t Ericka Lutz also in this collection? I’m really looking forward to reading her essay!
This book sounds great to me. I really think between what Cindy asked and what Nicki offered, it’s a done deal. If I don’t win it, I’m buying it. One copy for me and one copy for my mom!
Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!
I love her self-assuredness and her self-awareness and, mostly, the fact that she shares them with me.
Yes, Ericka Lutz is also in this collection. And yes, when you read it you’ll definitely want more than one so you can give it away.
What I love about my mother is that I can look at my daughter and see what a wonderful young lady she is becoming, due in no small part to the way my mother raised me. She taught me from a very young age how to love all and live life on an even keel….which I now see was the most important lesson in my life.
I love that my daughter has confidence in herself. She ended up on a completely new recreational soccer team this spring where she knew none of the other girls, instead of in the group she’d been with since kindergarden. When I asked her what she thought, she said, “That’s okay, it’s a chance to make new friends.” I would not have been so comfortable with that when I was eleven! I admire her flexibility and positive attitude.
What I love about my daughter is that she has a heart of gold. She is so loving and caring, and her honest, strong self brings me closer to my own truth.
I love that my mom is my best friend, and she is so smart. I can always count on her to be there when I need her! She’s the best!
I love being my daughters mom. She teaches me everyday day how to be brave and fearless. She has gone to 5 schools in 8 years because of her dad being in the military. She reminds me with each move that resilance is a skill, but when you mix it with kindness and optimism it becomes grace!
This anthology looks wonderful – I was teary just reading the interview! I’m definitely getting it for my mom and my sister…
One of the things that I love about my mom is the same thing I love about my daughter: a sense of adventure mixed with a true and deep compassion. As I struggle to be a strong and loving mother to my daughter as she follows her adventurous spirit out into the world, I have come to appreciate how my compassionately mother guided me, supported me and let me grow…all while living her own adventures. Coming to understand the one, while parenting the other has been an enriching experience!
When my mother died nine years ago I thought her death would not be hard for me. She’d had severe strokes several years before and for a long time she wasn’t “my mother” but someone else who was inhabiting my mothers’ body. The night she died I had dinner with my brother and sister-in-law and we were all fine. Afterward I went back to my room in the hotel. The instant I closed the door I was overcome by wailing, I mean WAILING, over my loss. When it passed I sat down on the bed and wrote down everything I remembered about my mother over the years. One of my favorite memories of her loving me is of her picking roses from her garden on my birthday mornings when I was growing up and making a corsage that she left in the refrigerator for me to find. My best memory of me loving her is of staying home from work one day after she’d had the strokes and come to live with my husband and me. I made her soup and a tuna salad sandwich just as she’d done for me so many times when I was a child, and I gave her a jigsaw puzzle with 15 pieces, my mother who had been such a brilliant puzzle solver. When she put the last piece in place an hour or so later we were grinning at each other and I don’t know which of us was more elated. Then I took our plates into the kitchen and wept.
i love my moms overbearing caring. she has to be one of the most overbearing people i know but when it comes to her family it is all out of love. even at 85 she would lay down in front of a moving train for her kids thanks for the giveaway
I love my mother we can talk on the phone for an hour about nothing…….
My mom is not “Mrs. Cleaver”. She wasn’t the “go-to” mom of my friends during my childhood. She never made any excuses for herself or her ways and never asked for more. But my mom was and still is wise and steadfast in spirit. At only 4’7″ tall, this little Italian spitfire can put you in your place and kiss you right after. She is always for the underdog and very opinionated – but funny her “opinions” usually seem to be the right ones. She’s my mom.
My daughter should’ve been born raising me. At 11 years old she is so much more wise and knowledgeable and graceful than I could’ve ever drempt of being at her young age. She is nurturing, sweet and happy to stay on the sidelines smiling – letting someone else take the lead. She is smart and creative. Not at all like me, she often seems a stranger, but a stranger I am so loving getting to know as we grow up together.
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I so look forward to reading this book. Lots of interesting writers with stories to tell.
My mother was one of the strongest women I have ever known. Born out of wedlock, in the late ’20′s in Italy, she lived through the scorn given to children in her situation. She moved through WWII and a subsequent relocation to Saudi, Arabia at the end of the war. Her’s was a life filled with rejection, ridicule and abandonment. Yet, somehow she was able to reach into the depths of her own soul to transform every negative aspect of her life into a deep, abiding and supportive love for me. There wasn’t an endeavor in my own life to which she didn’t lend her wisdom, caring and belief. As graceful as the art of her home in Florence, and with the heart of a tiger she moved through life with one purpose – that my life be different than hers. To an amazing degree, she succeeded and I am the beneficiary of a woman whose fierce loyalty formed the core of my character. My Mom and I certainly did not agree on everything and had a couple of rocky periods – but all these years after her death, the remembrance of her is at times an exquisite pain and blessed recognition of the almost holy relationship which can exist between a mother and daughter. I am so utterly grateful to have been given to her as daughter.
Would treasure a copy of the book and many thanks for providing this forum.
Sincerely,
Skye Leslie, daughter of Vanda Maria Giovetti
As a child, one of the hardest things to accept about my mother later turned out to be the primary thing that allowed her to parent me in the best way that she could. The mother I knew was not at all easy to get emotionally close to—and so I felt distanced from her for much of my life. In later years, I was able to understand how this very distance was her protection—and mine. This distance was what allowed my mother to raise me without harming me herself in the ways that she had been harmed. My mother grew up in a family full of trauma: her own mother became pregnant with her out of wedlock at age 16, and married the man who impregnated her, who over the years became an alcoholic, rageoholic, physically violent husband and father, who eventually molested my mother. However, I never knew any of this until many, many years later, as an adult, when much was revealed to me by a sensitive and close relative. My mother kept her trauma as far as possible from me—I would never have known about it growing up with her. It was, in fact, through a piece of literature I read just a few years ago that I was finally awakened into seeing my mother in an entirely new light…and found a portal to greater closeness with her than I’d ever known. With a box of tissue at my side, I read Amy Tan’s ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter’—more like devoured it. The centerpiece of Tan’s book is the reversal of an emotionally prejudiced point of view from a daughter to a mother, through the daughter coming across and reading a journal of her mother’s hidden and very painful history. The compassionate humanizing of the mother in Amy Tan’s book, and the resulting humility in the adult daughter was strong medicine for me. I shed my outdated views of my mother, paving the way for an entirely new relationship. I was 44 years old at the time. I sent my mother a letter along with a copy of the Tan book, and the stage was set for something entirely new to grow between us. The past few years have been a gradual discovering of our deep love and respect for each other. Today, I am ever so grateful for my mother for being just who she is—a courageous woman who made certain that her daughter would never experience the pain that she endured in childhood.
I am so anxious to read this book. Mothers and daughters, a wonderful topic anytime of the year. Plus, I have a childhood friend who is a contributor, Karen Karbo. I am grateful for a mother who was always there for me and now in her 93rd year I have the blessing of being there for her. I have been blessed with a mom who continues to have a positive attitude inspite of her challenges. She is a beautiful example of a life well lived. A life of kindness and giving and enduring to the end. My mom worked as a high school english subsitute until she was 86 years old. An example of hard work and determination. There are not enough words to describe the gift she has been to her children and all who call her their “other mother”. I am honored to have the sacred experience of helping her now as she becomes less able to do what she was so capable of doing throughout her life. I often tell my daughter to watch how I care for her grandmother because she may have to do the same for me some day. I only hope that I can be as good of an example to her as my mom has been to me. Thank you for this opprotunity to share. Happy Mother’s Day to all who mother. There is no greater responsiblilty.
My daughter has been the best mother to her autistic son who graduates from High School this month. She has advocated for him every step of the way and I am so proud of her.
I lve my mom’s silly sense of humor. It always cheers me up.
Thanks for the giveaway!
Kimspam66(at)yahoo(dot)com
I just read your blog with teary eyes, I’m so proud to be your mother.
P.S. I can’t wait to get my book!!!
[...] the Asia Literary Review, (Winter 2008, Hong Kong). She is also a contributor to the new anthology Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond, Andrea N. Richesin, editor (April 2009). Lucia can be reached through her website. Comments [...]
[...] by mom bloggers. Richesin regularly writes reviews for the site herself, and I have previously interviewed her and reviewed her own book about mothers and daughters as well as one about fathers and [...]