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BLENDED

Name: BLENDED
Author: Samantha Waltz
ISBN: 978-1-58005-557-4

WRITERS ON THE STEPFAMILY EXPERIENCE

edited by Samantha Waltz ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2015

These writings inform, wrestle with, and embrace these questions and more.

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Writers of all stripes explore the experience of being part of a stepfamily.

In the past few decades, a host of sociological studies have sought to make sense of the fracturing of the American marriage. As divorce rates have continued to hover around 50 percent, the studies have suggested something of a moral crisis, even to the most stoic of observers. The rates have decreased somewhat in the new century, but what of all those divorces? However, second and third marriages often succeed, which has led to increasing numbers of steprelationships—and all the ups and downs those relationships imply. In her collection, Waltz offers essays and stories from writers who have found themselves in stepfamilies, whether by their own decisions or by the marriages of others. Many of the pieces highlight the shifting boundaries and structures of “families,” including not only blood relatives and steprelatives, but also others who come to be considered “one of us” through selfless actions and commitments. The bonds that can be forged, we are reminded repeatedly, come more through empathy than through sharing parents; it’s more about what we do than who we are. The stepfamily can present problems not unfamiliar to blood relations, but with a different angle. The disagreements between two people worked out over time follow a different process than the disagreements that must be faced by a couple for whom the battles have been fought before and the willingness to see differently muted. The challenges can also be unique—e.g., how do we make that leap of faith into new families when our old ones have failed us? Throughout this collection, the contributors—who include Kerry Cohen, James Bernard Frost, Ariel Gore, and Ellen Sussman—provide “a model for creating order and peace out of a tangle of step relationships [or] let us know it isn’t always possible.”

These writings inform, wrestle with, and embrace these questions and more.

Pub Date: May 1, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-58005-557-4

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Seal Press

Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015

Categories:

FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS

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UPHILL WALKERS

A MEMOIR OF A FAMILY

by Madeleine Blais ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

An unfocused account that is intermittently moving but terribly unbalanced.

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A disjointed memoir of an Irish-American childhood in rural Massachusetts during the 1950s and ’60s.

In the first half of her narrative, newcomer Blais offers recollections of her father (a successful physician who died of cancer when she was five) and recounts anecdotes from her experiences at a Catholic school. Her mother, Maureen, was reluctant to remarry or work outside the home after her husband’s death, so she raised her six children on the proceeds of her husband’s life insurance policy and the charity of relatives. They didn’t starve, but they had to resign themselves to eating “cheaper tuna” and a dessert they called “dogfood.” As the eldest sister, the author was also the cruelest—shamelessly given to tormenting her sister Jacqueline (she defaced her diary, mocked her for being homesick at summer camp, and forced her to study the catechism in the dark). Blais feared only her eldest brother Raymond, a temperamental high-school dropout. After Raymond was mysteriously discharged from the Air Force, he began to show signs of mental illness and he was dependent on psychiatric drugs for the remainder of his life. His daily battles with his affliction soon come to dominate the narrative, and the author’s other three siblings remain more or less faceless by comparison. There are other characters of importance in this story (the author’s husband, for one), but they are all more or less overlooked as the narrative jumps through decades and bypasses significant events.

An unfocused account that is intermittently moving but terribly unbalanced.

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-87113-792-5

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS

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by Madeleine Blais

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by Madeleine Blais

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IN THESE GIRLS HOPE IS A MUSCLE
by Madeleine Blais

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THE BLUE JAY'S DANCE

A BIRTH YEAR

by Louise Erdrich ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 1995

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Astute, poetic reflections on the powerful mother-daughter relationship from conception through the baby's first year. Developmental researchers have found that when a mother and her infant gaze into each other's eyes, the feelings generated can be so intense that one or the other must turn away for relief. It is about such feelings that novelist Erdrich (The Beet Queen, 1993, etc.) writes in this intimate record of pregnancy and giving birth. "Love of an infant," she says, "is of a different order" than love of an adult: It is "all-absorbing, a blur of boundaries and messages...uncomfortably close to self-erasure." But like mother and infant, neither writer nor reader can confront those emotions directly for very long. So Erdrich finds both relief and metaphoric power in painting scenes from her life with her husband, five other children, a dog, and many cats on a New Hampshire farm. She describes dreaming over garden catalogs in the long New Hampshire winter nights, trapping and taming feral cats, collecting birds' nests, an "all-licorice" meal her husband prepared to satisfy her inexplicable craving, and a blue jay's defiant dance to successfully thwart a hawk's attack. Tied to each tale of rural life is a range of emotions: rage, depression, frustration, pain, sorrow, and nostalgia as well as transcendent joy, ordinary pleasure, pride, and satisfaction. How "a writer's sympathies, like forced blooms, enlarge in the hothouse of an infant's needs" is also part of Erdrich's story, as she trudges back and forth each day to her writing shack, accompanied by her nursing infant. For instance, a writer's effort to understand and depict evil becomes easier when the threat of evil coincides with a mother's absolute need to protect her child. Occasionally too self-conscious about the importance of Erdrich's role as Writer, but the bond between mother and infant has rarely been captured so well.