Bøger af Caledonia Kearns

The writings in this collection, fiction and nonfiction, are written from the perspectives of Irish American mothers and daughters. From Angela's Ashes to Riverdance, Irish literature and art are capturing the American imagination as never before. Ireland's literary legacy has taken root in American soil, and this dazzling anthology captures the spirit of this Celtic renaissance.Motherland presents a poignant collection of Irish American women's writings about the mother-daughter bond in all its variety: sometimes a source of strength and solace, sometimes of sorrow and resentment, but always and everywhere central to the author's identity.Acclaimed anthologist Caledonia Kearns has collected more than twenty pieces of fiction and nonfiction to create a rich tapestry of emotion, humor, and truth, featuring the work of contemporary writers, such as Anna Quindlen, Mary Gordon, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Mary Cantwell, Martha Manning, Rosemary Mahoney, Susan Minot, and Maureen Howard, along with voices from past eras like Margaret Sanger, Mother Jones, and M.F.K. Fisher.This book speaks directly to the hearts of every mother and daughter. Irish or not, readers will find treasures to cherish, wisdom to live by, and words that sing with the spirit of the Celtic soul. It's a wonderful gift for St. Patrick's Day, Mother's Day, or any occasion when eloquence is the order of the day.

A brave and evocative meditation on motherlove, which considers how we rebuild ourselves after loss.Caledonia Kearns' first collection of poems, published at 49, is an attempt to meet Muriel Rukeyser's challenge, "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?/The world would split open". Kearns' poems tell the story of an ordinary woman raising a daughter as a second-generation single mother, as she recreates herself after marriage, negotiates lovers lost and found, and navigates the quotidian.From Kearns' childhood in Dorchester, Massachusetts ("the streets of that other city/were so quiet it was always a lonely dark") to her daughter's childhood during the first wave of gentrification in Brooklyn ("This is Brooklyn now./ The antenna factories across the street are long gone"), it is a deeply urban story.Told in four parts, Kearns begins-"Coming from where I do/there was no choice but to bet on the filly." She moves on to explore the reconstruction of the self after the end of a marriage and the search for connection. The collection ends with a reckoning-her daughter's depression and hospitalization before she leaves for college: "I don't want to say/sometimes my daughter wants to die/but if I don't there's no saving her/sometimes my daughter wants to die." Along the way her daughter's voice infuses the occasional commentary: "How you think/you fucked me up/is not how/you fucked me up."Clear-eyed and persistent, the virtue of "A Daughter's Work Is Heartless by Nature" is its straightforward, accessible lyric, its relentless search for beauty in the day-to-day.