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IN PRAISE OF MOTHERS

Name: IN PRAISE OF MOTHERS
Author: Lilly Golden
ISBN: 0-87113-569-8

A LITERARY ANTHOLOGY

edited by Lilly Golden ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1994

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An anthology about something we all have. In addition to short fiction by Frank O'Connor (``My Oedipus Complex''), Alice Walker (``Everyday Use''), and others, Golden has included Jane Goodall's take on the nature vs. nurture dilemma in an essay about chimpanzees (``Mothers and Daughters''). There are also pieces by Pearl S. Buck, Bertolt Brecht, Michael Dorris, and Louise Erdrich, among others.

Pub Date: May 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-87113-569-8

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994

Categories:

FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS

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STILL LIFE WITH RICE

A YOUNG AMERICAN WOMAN DISCOVERS THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF HER KOREAN GRANDMOTHER

by Helie Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1996

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In a bio-fic, Lee makes her debut both recounting and imagining her Korean grandmother's eventful life: childhood and marriage under Japanese occupation, opium smuggling in China, and flight during the Korean war. Lee opens her first-person biography of her grandmother, Hongyong Baek, with a telling fraction of her own story—an all-American California girl, slightly uncomfortable with her grandmother's Korean outlook, who travels to Korea, Hong Kong, and China to trace her roots. But Lee's mannered naãvetÇ about her family's past seems at least in part a narrative device to stir curiosity about her grandmother's life. Likewise, her simplistically novelized recreation of that life is a strategy to acclimate the reader, albeit at the risk of losing sight of history. Lee successfully grounds such matters as her grandmother's pampered childhood and arranged marriage within the context of Korean culture, vividly illuminating family relationships, power struggles, and the realities of daily life in pre-Communist Korea. But the irritating imagined sections, with stilted dialogue and interior musings—such as Hongyong's marriage ceremony and her wedding night—are extravagantly intimate and unsatisfying. Nor does Lee seem to have full command of the background to the family's exile to China, where Hongyong entrepreneurially took up opium smuggling (and the healing art of Chiryo), nor to her grandmother's persecution under the North Korean Communist regime for converting to Christianity. Lee incorporates little sense of history beyond vague sentiments and a few important dates; the Japanese occupation and the Communist regime dwindle into a hazy background. Only with the Korean war is there a sense of living through history as Hongyong and her four youngest children make the harrowing trek south as refugees. The human interest of Hongyong's story is compelling, but its treatment will likely strike readers as incomplete.

Pub Date: March 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-684-80270-8

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996

Categories:

FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS

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THE SHELTER OF EACH OTHER

REBUILDING OUR FAMILIES

by Mary Pipher ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 1996

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Psychologist Pipher (Reviving Ophelia, 1994) provides a sharp, often unsettling critique of many of the values that currently define our lives, coupled with solid advice for rebuilding families. Maintaining that ``much of our modern unhappiness involves a crisis of meaning and values,'' Pipher contends that technology and consumerism have become the gods of the '90s. Hours spent viewing cable television programs and commercials not only discourage meaningful communication among family members, it also leaves the viewers with the impression that happiness can be purchased. This, in turn, triggers such a need for money that work—even when meaningless or despised—becomes the individual's raison d'àtre. True happiness, insists Pipher, comes from meaningful, ethical work. What people really need is ``protected time and space'' and the need to reconnect with one another and the outside world. Simple rituals, such as saying grace at dinner and unplugging the telephone and television, can ``hallow family time.'' Shifting the lens to her own profession, Pipher further contends that most therapists only harm their clients by focusing on their particular neuroses while ignoring the negative impact of contemporary culture. Therapists can be most helpful by encouraging the building of family connections, as well as links to the natural world and community resources. Pipher supplements her thesis with case studies. We hear of families that thrive when a parent cuts back on work hours and when a disaffected teen discovers the joys of helping the elderly. Lively, straightforward, and somewhat subversive, The Shelter of Each Other offers hope for the American family in a time that challenges its viability. (First printing of 125,000; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Book-of-the-Month Club main selection; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour)