All My Mothers and Fathers

by Blumenthal, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780060933920
• ISBN10: 0060933925
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-16
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

<p>Shortly after his mother dies of breast cancer when he is ten years old, Michael Blumenthal discovers that she was not his biological mother, and that his aunt and uncle, immigrant chicken farmers living in Vineland, New Jersey, are really his parents.</p><p>As fate would have it, his adoptive father, a German-Jewish refugee raised by a loveless and embittered stepmother after his own mother died in childbirth, has inflicted on his stepson a fate uncannily -- and terrifyingly -- similar to his own: having first adopted Michael, in part, to help his dying wife, he then imposes on him the same sort of penurious and loveless stepmother whom he himself had had to survive.</p><p>With these revelations, the "mysteries" that seem to have permeated Michael's childhood are laid bare, triggering a quest for belonging that will infiltrate the author's entire adult life. <i>All My Mothers and Fathers</i> is Michael Blumenthal's moving and powerful account of how he put his life together again, and made both a break from and peace with his past.</p>

Table of Contents

Prologue	1	(4)
Beginnings	5	(7)
Golden Days	12	(22)
The Eight Days	34	(11)
Malheurs	45	(32)
Muses	77	(24)
Eggs	101	(11)
The Graduate	112	(30)
Hallowed Halls	142	(14)
Again Through New Eyes	156	(8)
Rebirths	164	(25)
She and I	189	(13)
Kafka's Fathers	202	(39)
Epilogue I: Haifa, Israel, December 1996	241	(5)
Epilogue II: Jackson Heights, Queens, March 1999	246	(5)
Postscript	251	(6)
Acknowledgments	257