Motherloss
$17.95, £10.95 paperback
978-0-520-23200-6
Available Now
307 pages, 6 x 9 inches,
April 2000, Available worldwide
Categories: Sociology; Social Problems; Anthropology; Cultural Anthropology; American Studies; Gender Studies; Men & Masculinity; Women's Studies
April 2000, Available worldwide
Categories: Sociology; Social Problems; Anthropology; Cultural Anthropology; American Studies; Gender Studies; Men & Masculinity; Women's Studies
"A valuable contribution to a field in which little research has been done."—Library Journal
"Writing with elegance and a blessedly jargon-free style, Davidman explores the very specific ways the death of their mother affected a group of interviewees, then takes those individual stories to make some serious observations on the ways in which cultural notions of the meaning of mother have a powerful impact on the way we experience our own lives. . . . Motherloss is much more than a collection of sad stories, although I suspect that you will be deeply moved by these accounts. . . . Motherloss is a powerful call to action."—The Bay Guardian
"Writing with elegance and a blessedly jargon-free style, Davidman explores the very specific ways the death of their mother affected a group of interviewees, then takes those individual stories to make some serious observations on the ways in which cultural notions of the meaning of mother have a powerful impact on the way we experience our own lives. . . . Motherloss is much more than a collection of sad stories, although I suspect that you will be deeply moved by these accounts. . . . Motherloss is a powerful call to action."—The Bay Guardian
"Lynn Davidman has written a courageous and important book about the impact of losing one's mother at an early age. Courageous because this is painful material--no one who reads it can help but recall their own mother's passing, even if not at an early age--and important because it seems there are few, if any, other books like it."—Virginia Olesen, University of California, San Francisco
"This is an interesting, important, well-written book on a profoundly moving subject."—Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Genetic Maps and Human Imaginations
"This is an important contribution to our understanding of the social construction of personal loss. It's an absorbing read and a vivid, often poignant, description of the response to mother loss. Motherloss is a real find for anyone interested in the importance of mothering."— Arlene Kaplan Daniels, Northwestern University
"Sociology should focus on the most important human experiences, and Lynn Davidman gives us a sensitive account of the experience of losing one's mother. She shows that a sociology focused on meaning and identity best enables us to understand the personally unique experience of this loss for any individual without losing the shared cultural and social context in which such loss is also given form."—Nancy Chodorow, author of The Power of Feelings
"This is an interesting, important, well-written book on a profoundly moving subject."—Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Genetic Maps and Human Imaginations
"This is an important contribution to our understanding of the social construction of personal loss. It's an absorbing read and a vivid, often poignant, description of the response to mother loss. Motherloss is a real find for anyone interested in the importance of mothering."— Arlene Kaplan Daniels, Northwestern University
"Sociology should focus on the most important human experiences, and Lynn Davidman gives us a sensitive account of the experience of losing one's mother. She shows that a sociology focused on meaning and identity best enables us to understand the personally unique experience of this loss for any individual without losing the shared cultural and social context in which such loss is also given form."—Nancy Chodorow, author of The Power of Feelings
Lynn Davidman's pathbreaking study analyzes the immediate and continuing impact of a mother's premature death on the children she leaves behind. Drawing on interviews with sixty adults from a variety of class backgrounds, Davidman argues that the experience of motherloss is shaped by our social conceptions of women's roles in the family and in society. Speaking candidly, often with great emotion and insight, Davidman's interviewees were glad for the opportunity to break cultural taboos and silences about death and to create stories that reveal the power of this early loss to influence their lifelong conceptions of self, family, community, God, and love. With a profound sense of purpose and keen insight, Davidman highlights the narratives of ten respondents, weaving them together into a powerful book that reveals the numerous common themes--as well as the individual variations--in people's stories. This first study of the lifelong impact of motherloss on women's and men's lives will become the definitive work on perhaps the deepest and most complex disruption to occur in the course of a life.
Davidman, who was thirteen when her mother died of cancer, enriches the narrative with her own insights of growing up as the only female in an Orthodox Jewish home with her father and two brothers. The book is enlivened by her movement back and forth between herself and others, individuals and society, thereby challenging the assumption that the personal has no place in our quest for knowledge and understanding. She successfully uses others' experiences to better illuminate her own, and at the same time develops an empathic understanding of their stories by reaching deep into her own memories and feelings about her mother's death and its impact on her life. Despite the silences, isolation, and confusion that accompany a mother's death, and the cultural messages to "move on," Davidman's respondents find ways--in thoughts, prayers, memories, symbolic objects, and practices--to retain their mother's presence in their daily lives.
Davidman, who was thirteen when her mother died of cancer, enriches the narrative with her own insights of growing up as the only female in an Orthodox Jewish home with her father and two brothers. The book is enlivened by her movement back and forth between herself and others, individuals and society, thereby challenging the assumption that the personal has no place in our quest for knowledge and understanding. She successfully uses others' experiences to better illuminate her own, and at the same time develops an empathic understanding of their stories by reaching deep into her own memories and feelings about her mother's death and its impact on her life. Despite the silences, isolation, and confusion that accompany a mother's death, and the cultural messages to "move on," Davidman's respondents find ways--in thoughts, prayers, memories, symbolic objects, and practices--to retain their mother's presence in their daily lives.
Tradition in a Rootless World, by Lynn Davidman
http://scribble.nu/x/?u=wendystc&e=ALL