In My Mother's House: A Memoir

by Chernin, Kim

• ISBN13: 9781931561327
• ISBN10: 193156132X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-05-01
• Publisher: Macadam Cage Pub

Summary

In this twentieth anniversary edition of the feminist classic In My Mother's House, Kim Chernin tells the brave and ultimately triumphant story of Rose Chernin, Russian immigrant and passionate Old Left activist, and her daughter Kim, the narrator of this riveting memoir of conflict, confrontation, and reconciliation among four generations of Chernin women. My mother was a political activist who participated in the making of history. Her daughter is an introspective, poetic sort of person, the very type likely to be fascinated by this life that was larger-than-life. Yet it was the mother who suggested that the daughter undertake the task of telling the mother's story. And it was the daughter who worked for seven years to accomplish it. In My Mother's House, from its very first pages, steps out into a large social and historical terrain. This scope is achieved in large part by beginning the story with and concentrating much of it on my mother whose life began in a small Jewish shtetl in Russia and brought her into eventual leadership of the most radical social m

Author Biography

Kim Chernin is the author of fourteen books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, She lives in Berkeley, California, where she has a private coaching and consultation practice

Table of Contents

PART ONE: Wasn't I Once Also a Daughter?
The Proposal	3	(22)
The First Story My Mother Tells: Childhood in Russia	25	(14)
Oy, My Enlightenment	39	(10)
The Second Story My Mother Tells: America, the Early Years	49	(22)
Do This for Me, Rose	71	(6)
The Third Story My Mother Tells: A Larger World	77	(28)
Three Sisters	105	(18)
The Fourth Story My Mother Tells: I Fight for My Mother	123	(30)
Wasn't I Once Also a Daughter?	153	(18)
PART TWO: The Almond Giver
She Comes to Visit	171	(10)
The Fifth Story My Mother Tells: Motherland	181	(28)
A Walk in the Woods	209	(4)
The Sixth Story My Mother Tells: The Organizer	213	(28)
The Rose Garden	241	(8)
The Seventh Story My Mother Tells: Letters	249	(12)
The Almond Giver	261	(6)
The Eight Story My Mother Tells: A Birth and a Death	267	(18)
PART THREE: The Survivor
414 East 204th Street	285	(10)
The Crossroads	295	(10)
The First Story I Tell: Hard Times	305	(24)
Take a Giant Step	329	(6)
The Second Story I Tell: A Communist Childhood	335	(40)
A Knock at the Door	375	(6)
The Third Story I Tell: Motherland Revisited	381	(44)
What Remains	425	(20)
Epilogue	445