Meeting My Father Halfway
Format
Book
Publication Date
10-1990
Publisher
Crossing Press
ISBN
978-0895944245
Description
The filial bonds represented in these 27 short stories by contemporary women range from natural and intimate, as in the excerpts from Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, wherein a daughter happily tastes food from her father's plate, to artificial and unpleasant, as in the weekend spent by two blood-related strangers in Mariane Rogoff's "Meeting My Father Halfway." Two of the best stories--Edna O'Brien's "What a Sky" and Joyce Carol Oates's "Stroke"--examine in jarring detail the complexity of seemingly "normal" relationships. A lingering sense of loss and missed opportunities infuses the omnibus. Hospitals and funerals are the prevailing setting; in one story, "People Should Not Die in June in South Texas," by Gloria E. Anzaldua, a father's death occasions a narrative that's more like a wail of grief. The tone throughout is one of compassion mixed with anger--only in one instance, Carolyn Gage's "Letter to My Father," does it descend into unadulterated hatred--and though the stories can repeat themselves thematically, on the whole this anthology will have something to say to anyone who has ever been, or ever had, a daughter. ~ Publisher's Weekly
Book Title
My Father's Daughter: Stories
Editor
Irene Zahava
Files
City
Freedom, CA