Snapshots: 20th Century Mother-Daughter Fiction

Foreword

by Joyce Carol Oates

A woman is her mother.
That's the main thing.

—Anne Sexton

BUT IS IT SO?

Most days I think, no. Certainly a woman isn't her mother. Or, if resembling her mother, she isn't totally her mother; she is her father as well, and any number of ancestors known and unknown. A woman is the sum of all her influences—genetic, environmental, personal, and impersonal. I know this; I believe this. Yet, so strangely, Anne Sexton's flat, dogmatic lines sometimes resound in my imagination—whether as curse or blessing, as explanation or mystery, I can't say. (The lines are from a terse, rather terrifying poem, "Housewife," from the much acclaimed collection of 1962, All My Pretty Ones. The book established Anne Sexton as a new and disturbingly talented poet, an innovator in what would be called "confessional" poetry, a poetry in which women poets would excel.)

This gathering of mother-daughter, or daughter-mother, stories speaks to the daughter in all of us, for, if women, we have all been daughters. And while we may not all be mothers, we have surely played "mother" roles and have imagined ourselves, for better or worse, as mothers. Reading such powerful stories as Edna O'Brien's "A Rose in the Heart of New York," Ursula K. Le Guin's "Solitude," and Margaret Atwood's "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother" jolts us into realizing the extraordinary range and depth of what the term mother can mean. Perhaps no word in our language has accrued so many stereotypical associations as mother (though it may be outdone by the term God), and yet—how mysterious mothers are! In our collection, it seems to be mothers who, for obvious reasons, exert the most influence, whether benign or malevolent. A subtly disquieting story like Lorrie Moore's "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)" would seem to be making the point that, finally, you don't know how to talk to your mother because you don't have a clue who your mother is. Between the stunning cessation of her (mental) life and the utterly bewildering beginning of your own life (your birth), you live together yet inhabit separate worlds. Even the more relaxed, less unsettling of these stories—Margaret Atwood's buoyantly written "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother" and Jane Shapiro's witty "Mousetrap" as well as Jamaica Kincaid's defiant monologue "Girl" —make the point that Mother is an object of continuous, frustrating speculation.

Though sharing a common subject matter, these stories scarcely repeat one another in voice, tone, atmosphere, or "meaning." There is a highly interior poetic voice in Martha Soukup's gently fantastic "Up Above Diamond City"; there is an American-vernacular idiom of ease and humor in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," Gloria Naylor's "Kiswana Browne," and Katherine Dunn's "The Allies." A tauter, more ironic tone is appropriate for the cautionary tale, "Cleaning Up," by Mary Gordon, while a more fabulist note is struck in Lois Gould's "La Lloradora" and in Isabel Allende's "Wicked Girl."

Janet Berliner's tautly poetic "Everything Old Is New Again" springs from the mysterious juncture of the interior and the exterior—the world of memory and the world of present-time. This is our only story in which the very balance of the generations is considered, as a woman at the midpoint of her life reaches out to forgive (her eighty-year-old mother) and to be forgiven (by her estranged daughter). The arrival of a battered doll (herself?) out of her turbulent past triggers a crisis of emotion that resolves itself into the realization to which we all, if we're lucky, one day come: Everything old is new again, if we will it to be so.

Like all of the stories we've included, this one is ardently written and often achingly sincere; like the others it is meant, above all, to engage and entertain you.

If it does—if they do—we have done our job.

Contents

Foreword, Joyce Carol Oates
Introduction, Janet Berliner

Isabel Allende, Wicked Girl
Julia Alvarez, Consuelo's Letter
Margaret Atwood, Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother
Katherine Dunn, The Allies
Mary Gordon, Cleaning Up
Lois Gould, La Lloradora
Bette Greene, An Ordinary Woman
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
Ursula K. Le Guin, Solitude
Lorrie Moore, How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)
Gloria Naylor, Kiswana Browne
Edna O'Brien, A Rose in the Heart of New York
Jane Shapiro, Mousetrap
Martha Soukup, Up Above Diamond City
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
Joyce Carol Oates, Death Mother
Janet Berliner, Everything Old Is New Again

Contributors' Notes

Reviews

• Booklist, August 1992, p. 1993, 2000
• Library Journal, August 1992, p. 154
• Publisher's Weekly, August 17, 1992, p. 492
• New Yorker, September 14, 1992, p. 110
• Detroit News, October 28, 1992, p. C3
• Denver Post, November 15, 1992, p. F8
• Washington Post Book World, November 15, 1992, p. 13
• San Francisco Review of Books, v18, n2, 1993, p. 14+
• Observer, February 7, 1993, p. 53
• Times Literary Supplement, February 26, 1993, p. 20
• Commentary, March 1993, p. 49+
• Guardian, March 2, 1993, p. 2,10
• Guardian Weekly, March 28, 1993, p. 29
• Book Report, May 1993, p. 46
• Black Scholar, Winter 1993, p. 45

Introduction

by Janet Berliner

The best and most enduring works of literature have one thing in common, their universality.

—Dr. Samuel Draper

SOME YEARS AGO, when I was working with David Copperfield on the anthology Tales of the Impossible, I asked Joyce Carol Oates if she would write an original story for that volume. She graciously sent me not one but two stories. One of those, "The Hand-Puppet," appeared in the Copperfield volume. The other, a novelette called "Death Mother," was the seed from which this volume grew.

Joyce says of this story: "There are religions like Hinduism that honor the paradox of the amoral mother (Nature) who both nurtures and destroys, gives the precious gift of life and snatches it away again; but our more individual-centered, action-oriented tradition favors resistance. In a dream I saw the malevolent figure of the mother who tells us the worst things about ourselves and urges us to defeat, not triumph; I felt her chilly fingers clasping my wrist; I woke with a shudder, and was determined to write, not a parable of defeat, but one of a difficult victory."

I am always impressed by Joyce's work, but there was something in this story that particularly affected me—not the least because it is about a mother and a daughter, and I am both of those. This dual identity is the universal bond that links me to other women.

With that in mind, I reread Gloria Naylor's "Kiswana Browne," from her best-selling The Women of Brewster Place. The story was as I remembered it. Wry, earthy, and timely, it relates with remarkable accuracy the dilemma of this decade's so-called independent, single, urban woman.

I began to understand the road I was traveling and asked Joyce if she would collaborate on a gathering of stories about mothers and daughters. To my delight, she said yes. Thus began a lengthy and fascinating correspondence, which included commentary and discussions about the stories under consideration. In this introduction, I have tried to recreate some of these discussions by interspersing Joyce's comments with my own.

About "Kiswana Browne," for instance, she wrote:

"This wise, funny tale pits a mother's strong personality against her daughter's less defined personality, and subtly presents, as if for our judgment, the daughter's ambivalence toward her mother. One of its epiphanies is: ‘Black isn't beautiful and it Isn't ugly—black is! It's not kinky hair and it's not straight hair—it just is.'" Later, she added "This is one of only a few stories in our anthology that can be called 'political'—though its politics is thoroughly steeped in intimacy."

Next, synchronicity took over. I received a call from my youngest daughter, then a graduate student at Brown. She had fallen in love with Isabel Allende's Eva Luna and wanted to talk about the book. I pulled it down from my shelf and "Wicked Girl" jumped out at me.

Constructed in inimitable Allende fashion, this coming-of-age story once again surprised me with its loops and twists. As for Joyce, what she found "most delightful" about "Wicked Girl" was "the sharply observed, intimate details of a life remote from our own, yet immediately recognizable. Here is a revelation of the 'insupportable longing' of sexual infatuation—and its eventual denouement."

In full gear now, I reread Ursula Le Guin's futuristic "Solitude" and Edna O'Brien's "A Rose in the Heart of New York," and juxtaposed them against two stories that Joyce suggested, Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl " and "Consuelo's Letter " by Julia Alvarez.

The settings could not have been more dissimilar—Outer Space, New York City, the American South, and Cuba—and the stories ran the gamut from sad to funny, from thought provoking to visceral. But dissimilar or not, they were bonded by more than the common theme of mother-daughter relationships.

Seeking a definition of that bond, I asked Joyce to comment.

"Ursula K. Le Guin is one of our best philosophical writers," Joyce wrote to me. "Her imagination is both poetic and conceptual."

Philosophical? Of course. Early in her off-world mother-daughter story, Le Guin writes, "There is no magic in things, only in minds," and toward the end she goes on to say, "Being aware is the hardest work a soul can do, I think." The story and the statement dance around something about which I have often wondered: Is a soul, if such a thing exists, everyone's birthright, or are we supposed to create our souls by the way we live and think?

I thought again about the O'Brien story. When I first read it, my mother was dying. Her mind was as sharp as ever, so I convinced myself that she wasn't yet ready to die and did everything I could to try to keep her alive. Was that an act of selfishness on my part, born of the fear of facing my own mortality? I don't know that there's an answer, but I suspect we all ask the question—though never more eloquently than Ms. O'Brien does in "A Rose in the Heart of New York."

Joyce agreed. "This is one of the most poetic and subtle stories in our collection," she wrote, "a lyric, beautiful and heart-rending Irish story which evokes a sense of the fabulous and mythical." And of the philosophical, I thought, as she went on to talk about "Girl" and "Consuelo's Letter." "'Girl' is a perfect miniature narrative, a daughter's monologue deft and compelling and economically structured as a sonnet," she said. "As for 'Consuelo's Letter,' it shares with several other stories in this anthology an honoring of the invisible community of women extending sympathy and aid to one another."

I have lived in the West Indies. A piece of my heart will always be in the islands. I swear I have met Consuelo and Ruth; if I have not done so, then I have met their counterparts. I have given them mangoes from my trees in exchange for figs from theirs. I have given them pens and paper and books, and they—like the old woman in the story—have passed on their philosophies and given me kindness. As for the Kincaid, some writers construct an opus around a small thought. Here, Kincaid speaks volumes in a mere seven hundred words.

By now it seemed as if every good female writer, every sensitive female writer, had penned at least one superior mother-daughter story. To avoid a volume of encyclopaedic size, we had to narrow our choices. After much debate, we selected another cluster of stories: Margaret Atwood's "Significant Moments In the Life of My Mother" from her collection, Bluebeard's Egg; "The Allies," a story by Katherine Dunn; "La Lloradora," excerpted from Lois Gould's La Presidenta. To those, we added Bette Greene's "An Ordinary Woman" and "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)" from Lorrie Moore's first collection, Self-Help. "Mousetrap" by Jane Shapiro and Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" completed our reprint list.

I have long admired Ms. Atwood's work, so I was particularly gratified when she agreed to send us a contribution for this anthology, then dismayed when "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother" arrived in the mail. I loved the piece, but I had distinctly asked for fiction, and this, surely, was nonfiction. After delaying as long as I could, I wrote a letter restating that this was a collection of fiction and sadly declining the essay.

Fortunately I was wrong. The story's apparent truth was simply further testimony to the author's storytelling skills.

Amused by my error, Joyce sent me the following note:

"Margaret Atwood is one of those writers whose prose is so irresistibly engaging, we are always tempted to believe anything it tells us; her mother-portraits, like her father-portraits, are so vivid and lifelike, we invariably think the author is writing autobiography. Perhaps this is the highest compliment a fiction writer can receive?"

Joyce called Katherine Dunn's "The Allies" "a touching double portrait of an artistically talented, emotionally volatile mother and her sharply observant adolescent daughter, set against a very American background of UFO's and 'savior' aliens." If that sounds simplistic, think again, remembering that it was Dunn who wrote the wonderfully skewed, award-winning novel Geek Love.

The stories by Lois Gould and Bette Greene were especially personal choices for me. I had, decades ago, read Gould's novel La Presidenta. Though I did not know the author personally, I wrote to her care of her publisher to tell her how much I loved the book. She signed a copy and wrote me a charming note. The book, oft-reread, and the note, yellowed with the years, have resided on my desk-shelf ever since. Like a pulp fiction detective, I tracked her down to ask if I could excerpt from her book for this volume. Joyce called the excerpt "a lush, unpredictable, wonderfully imaginative adventure reminiscent of the magic realism of Latin American literature," in which "the legend of Eva Peron is explored from an intimate perspective." For my part, I hope that once you have read the excerpt you will make it your business to find the novel and read that, too.

As for Bette Greene, the author's first novel, Summer of My German Soldier, had a profound effect on my own writing life because it convinced me that it was possible to entertain readers while conveying a serious message. It's rather like giving someone chicken soup: first it should taste good; then, with luck, it should be curative. Her story "An Ordinary Woman" is about single parenting, addiction, tough love, and survival, yet It paints a portrait of a mother who, as Joyce puts it, "is both ordinary and not-so-ordinary."

When Joyce sent me "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)," she called it "a story that brilliantly combines the author's quirky, sharp-edged talent for humor, pathos, heartbreak and the perfectly chosen image. Beginning with the mother's powerfully noted absence, the story moves swiftly backward in time to a moment of unspeakable mystery: the narrator's birth."

Joyce was right. This wonderful piece of writing is a movie run in reverse, a chronology beginning in 1982, when the protagonist is forty-three, and ending in 1939, with her as a newborn. It says that while you can readily search for your roots, understanding them is only really possible after you've learned to understand yourself.

By way of introduction to "Mousetrap" by Jane Shapiro, Joyce wrote: "Jane Shapiro often writes, with similar humor and sagacity, about the inevitable conflict between generations. Her characters are all gifted with their creator's droll, sometimes sardonic but always perceptive sensibility. In 'Mousetrap' we meet the quintessential Jane Shapiro mother: sharp-tongued, very funny, and very sad." To that may I add that the story will remain timely for as long as critical daughters have aging mothers who yearn to shout, "Look at me. Really look at me. You may find this hard to be believe, but I used to be a person, just like you."

In "Everyday Use," Alice Walker asks whether we can define ourselves or whether we are ultimately defined by the eye of the beholder. Of this story, Joyce wrote: "This is a deservedly famous story of two very different sisters who perceive the world of their birth in opposing terms. Wonderfully 'symbolic,' yet utterly domestic and matter-of-fact, 'Everyday Use' will provoke you to wonder: What does it mean to memorialize the past? How can we best express our love for our heritage? Through isolating it, as art; or using it, as life?"

These stories completed our reprint selections, but the book itself remained incomplete. It needed something entirely fresh, something new. I therefore contacted two more writers and asked if they would each consider writing original stories. One of them, was Mary Gordon, who sent me "Cleaning Up."

No matter what the theme, a new Mary Gordon story is an event. Here, she puts her unique touch on a tale of revenge that Joyce accurately describes as "both gracefully executed and viscerally hard-hitting, an austere and unexpectedly elegiac story of a lost girlhood." In the story, a poor but proud single mother loses her mind and is institutionalized. Her daughter is taken in by one of the town's uppercrust families. They feed her and clothe her, but never quite accept her as an equal. Feeling eternally patronized, she plots to avenge herself and her mother. Does she?

I was still asking myself that question and thinking about lost girlhoods when Martha Soukup's "Up Above Diamond City" arrived. I sent it on to Joyce at once.

"This is a delicately fantastic story of the imagination's powers," Joyce wrote back. "Out of the tension between a mother and her daughter there arises, as if by magic, a dream-world 'Diamond City' as a place where time moves swiftly—and where one can take refuge. We come away with a sense of mystery and of the joy in mystery."

I could not agree more.

Martha and I were once part of the same writers' workshop. Her voice captivates me. Her stories haunt me. Knowing that she rarely agrees to write a commissioned story, I nevertheless twisted her arm for this anthology. I am deeply glad that I did, for how else could the child protagonist of this story have shown me Diamond City. Now I can go there whenever I please.

While there are doubtless other wonderful stories out there and tales as yet unwritten that rightfully belong in this collection, that story—and the one I still wanted to write—completed the book. For me, it presents Motherhood in microcosm and affirms the truth that, while we do not all like being daughters or like our mothers, women are inextricably bonded by something that neither ethnicity nor age nor stage of life can remove. Thus those of us who call ourselves writers inevitably turn to exploring, in words, the mother-daughter relationship.

I hope that you enjoy the stories Joyce and I have seen fit to include, and that the pleasure derived from them leads to new insights. That was—and is—certainly true for me.