Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the grand-daughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slaver...y is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said "On the line!" The Reconstruction said "Go!" I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My son and daughter tell me where they are in very different ways. I know where my son is because I hear him. I know where my daug...hter is because she tells me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[T]he syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The ho...rse leech's daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a sort of veteran women of condition, who, having lived always in the grand mode, and having possibly had some gallantrie...s, together with the experience of five and twenty or thirty years, form a young fellow better than all the rules that can be given him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The tension to mother the "right" way can leave a peculiar silence within mother daughter relationships--the silence of a mother's... own truth and experience. Within this silence, a daughter's authentic voice can also fall silent. This is the silence of perfection. This silence of perfection prevents mothers from listening and learning from their daughters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Raising a daughter is an extremely political act in this culture. Mothers have been placed in a no-win situation with their daught...ers: if they teach their daughters simply how to get along in a world that has been shaped by men and male desires, then they betray their daughters' potential But, if they do not, they leave their daughters adrift in a hostile world without survival strategies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Suddenly, through birthing a daughter, a woman finds herself face to face not only with an infant, a little girl, a woman-to- be, ...but also with her own unresolved conflicts from the past and her hopes and dreams for the future.... As though experiencing an earthquake, mothers of daughters may find their lives shifted, their deep feelings unearthed, the balance struck in all relationships once again off kilter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Listening to learn isn't about giving advice--at least not until asked--but about trying to understand exactly what someone means,... how it is that someone looks at and feels about her particular situation.... Listening to learn from a daughter in adolescence, conspiring with her thoughts and feelings, keeps a mother in touch with a daughter's growing and changing self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat, sleep, loaf around, flirt a little, dance a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall. N...o one knows anything about the person next to them. And when you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed. That's the end.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »