Every Father's Daughter: Twenty-Four Women Writers Remember Their Fathers

by Margaret McMullan (Editor), Phillip Lopate (Foreword by)

Overview

"What is it about the relationship between fathers and daughters that provokes so much exquisite tenderness, satisfying communion, longing for more, idealization from both ends, followed often if not inevitably by disappointment, hurt, and the need to understand and forgive, or to finger the guilt of not understanding and loving enough?" writes Phillip Lopate, in his introduction to this collection of 24 personal essays by women writers writing about their fathers. The editor, Margaret McMullan, is herself a distinguished novelist and educator. About half of these essays were written by invitation for this anthology; others were selected by Ms. McMullan and her associate, Philip Lopate, who provides an introduction. Contributors include many well-known writers Alice Munro, Jayne Anne Phillips, Alexandra Styron, Ann Hood, Bobbie Ann Mason, Maxine Hong Kingston among them and writers perhaps less well-known but no less cogent, inventive, perceptive, questioning or loving of their fathers

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620540138
Publisher:	McPherson & Company
Publication date:	04/28/2015
Pages:	302
Sales rank:	628,170
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

The editor, Margaret McMullan, is herself a distinguished novelist and educator. About half of these essays were written by invitation for this anthology; others were selected by Ms. McMullan and her associate, Philip Lopate, who provides an introduction. The contributors include many well-known writers-Alice Munro, Jayne Anne Phillips, Alexandra Styron, Ann Hood, Bobbie Ann Mason, Maxine Hong Kingston, among others-as well as writers less well-known but no less cogent, inventive, perceptive, lacerating, questioning, or loving of their fathers.

Table of Contents

Foreword Margaret McMullan 9

Introduction Phillip Lopate 17

Absences

No Regrets Jane Smiley 23

Christmas From Now On Patricia Henley 33

My Father's Daughter Bliss Broyard 37

Secrets of the Sun Mako Yoshikawa 51

Sol's Exodus Nancy Jainchill 67

Lost & Found

My Dad Jill McCorkle 79

My Father's Bible Joyce Maynard 87

Masters in This Hall Melora Wolff 97

Crossing State Lines Jessica Woodruff 117

The Memory I Chose Jane Friedman 129

Waiting for My Father Barbara Shoup 137

The American Father Maxine Hong Kingston 147

Presences

Life Saver Ann Hood 167

Reading My Father Alexandra Styron 173

Gifts Nancy McCabe 191

Oxygen Susan Neville 207

What He Worked For Susan Perabo 219

Do You See What I See? Antonya Nelson 225

Daddy's Dime Store Lee Smith 229

Balloons Johanna Gohmann 235

A Relationship of Words Lily Lopate 243

Burning the Trees Jayne Anne Phillips 255

My Fathers Bobbie Ann Mason 263

Working for a Living Alice Munro 267

Contributors & Acknowledgments 295

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/06/2015
This anthology is a treasure trove of personal essays exploring the father-daughter relationship—the bitter and the sweet. McMullan (Sources of Light) selected 24 accomplished female writers of varying ages and backgrounds and asked them to recall their fathers; their diverse voices reveal personal experiences with family dynamics and upbringing, tenderness and nurturing, alcoholism and detachment. In her own essay, McMullan writes movingly of her beloved father's last days and their shared love of literature, which inspired this collection. Alexandra Styron recalls growing up with a famous father, a literary star who battled controversy, and whose frequent absences left little time for intimacy. Barbara Shoup's father was "a quiet, desperate drinker," a secret that took a toll on the family. Maxine Hong Kingston writes poetically of "father places" in their home and in the stores and alleys of San Francisco's Chinatown. Jane Smiley's insightful essay references her troubled father's distance from her life as a "gift of absence," allowing her to thrive free of his demands and perspectives about women's "limited capacities." Alice Munro's concluding essay, the "cornerstone" of the anthology, details her Canadian farm life and the family business of raising and killing foxes and selling their pelts. By turns sentimental and dark, McMullan's stunning collection has a wonderful purity. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

07/01/2015
Whether describing a relationship that is fraught or delightful, a father who is around to advise or whose passing is still a wound, these essays impart a deep love that will move the reader at turns to laughter and tears. McMullan's (How I Found the Strong) foreword explains that what she read to her father—who as a young man she says was "marvelously determined and ready to get the hell started with his life"—and what she wanted to read after he died inspired this anthology. Phillip Lopate's introduction then laments that there is no word for loving one's daughter. That English can lack as a language is not otherwise borne out in this book; its essays by, for example, Lopate's daughter Lily on her famously loquacious dad; Jane Smiley on a difficult father who believed that "a novel…could never be as well-written as The Army Field Manual"; and Maxine Hong Kingston on her father, who ran a gambling house, are dreamy, intriguing, and beautifully composed. VERDICT A treat for daughters, fathers, and anyone who enjoys exploring relationships and their many twists and turns.—Henrietta Verma, Library Journal

Library Journal

2015-01-18
A collection of essays on the father-daughter dynamic.Editor and novelist McMullan (Literature and Writing/Univ. of Evansville; Sources of Light, 2010, etc.) presents 24 ways of "knowing" one's father by accomplished, independent daughters, each with a folksy introduction to help situate the relationship in place and time. For many of these authors, the father was a tall, handsome, impossibly romantic character in the family, removed from the quotidian, often remote, and whose approval the daughters tried to maintain. In a twist on this theme, Jane Smiley writes how ultimately relieved she was not to know her father—who perhaps suffered from PTSD and divorced her mother when the author was a toddler—because his absence allowed her the space to grow up "free of preconceptions." Some of the contributors offer reminiscences following their fathers' deaths—e.g., Jill McCorkle in "My Dad." In "My Father's Daughter," Bliss Broyard fills in a deeper portrait of her philandering, brilliant, bookish father by talking to his lively, lifelong best friends in Greenwich Village, concluding ruefully that she should have paid more attention to her father when he was alive. Melora Wolff offers an excellent view of the glamorous world of visiting fathers from the first-person, plural view of young ladies at New York City's Brearley School, while Barbara Shoup describes her father's vanishing into alcoholism in her excruciating essay "Waiting for My Father." Throughout, fathers often represent the world of work, whether in the "special places" like the gambling house that Maxine Hong Kingston describes in "The American Father" or the sacred writing den that was strictly off limits to boisterous children, as depicted in Alexandra Styron's "Reading My Father." Other contributors include Jayne Anne Phillips, Antonya Nelson, Ann Mason and Alice Munro, and Phillip Lopate provides the introduction. Consistently elucidating portraits.

Kirkus Review