Title
Meeting My Father Halfway
Format
Book
Book Title
My Father's Daughter: Stories
Editor
Irene Zahava
Files
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
ISBN
978-0895944245
Publication Date
10-1990
Publisher
Crossing Press
City
Freedom, CA
Keywords
short stories, MFA in Creative Writing
Disciplines
Creative Writing
Recommended Citation
Rogoff, Marianne, "Meeting My Father Halfway" (1990). Faculty Authored Books and Book Contributions. 96.
https://scholar.dominican.edu/books/96