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As a reader, mother-daughter stories like this have resonated
with me since I was a preteen obsessed with Anne Frank’s
diary. My own experience as a daughter was unlike the fraught
relationships portrayed in most memoirs, but I still reread their
pages endlessly, studying the universal adolescent desire to both
accept and reject a parent.

For Mother’s Day this year, while stuck in California and
unable to visit my mom abroad in the Netherlands for the
foreseeable future, I decided to revisit memoirs that have
provided comfort through their relatability over the years. My
life isn’t exactly like those of my beloved memoir writers, but so
many details and stories ring true, almost bringing me back to
being in close proximity to my mom.

Here are a few memoirs that I’ve found particularly
compelling as the daughter of a Jewish mother over the years.

Just recently, the essay collection “What My Mother and I
Don’t Talk About” reminded me how daughters can put their
mothers’ lives under a microscope — searching for a blueprint on
how to develop bravery, courage and other life skills. The writer
Sari Botton’s contribution (15 writers contributed essays) features
her observations of the men in her mother’s life, including how
the Chanukah gifts she received would depend on the male part-
ner of the time. Ultimately, she chronicles the marriages as a lens
to examine her mother’s generous and resilient spirit.

In college, I devoured Julie Klam’s debut “Please Excuse My
Daughter,” about the privileged childhood in Bedford, New York,
that left her unable to navigate her world as a grown-up. Some
28 MAY 14, 2020
books find us at the right time, and this author helped me feel
less alone during a stage where one is expected to have acquired
more wisdom about life than I had.

Reading sections about the department store shopping sprees
that Klam’s mother dragged her to during school time, I thought
about my own brushes with missing school for an unnecessary
reason. I’d summer with my mother and her parents in the
Midwest, and sometimes we’d stay too long and I’d miss the
beginning of the school year back in the Netherlands, where
I grew up. My mother wrote notes for my Dutch high school
teachers on the plane on the back of airsickness bags.

“What will I tell the teacher?” I asked, worrying about how
her paper of choice made me look.

“Tell him your mother works,” she would say.

Klam’s mother has three sisters. She writes how the “Jewish
Gang of Four” encourages her to embrace a performative brand
of womanhood. To me, my mother was as chic and stylish as
Marcia Klam, insisting on new outfits for both of us every time
the High Holidays came around.

In “For You, Mom. Finally,” Ruth Reichl writes about my
grandmother’s generation. I was in my mid-20s when the book
came out, wanting to know how Reichl, one of my favorite food
writers, had arrived there. The answer lies in her opportunity to
deviate from the path of her mother, whom she describes as born
in the worst time to be a middle-class American woman.

“She wasn’t much at keeping house and I don’t think I’ve ever
met anyone who was a worse cook,” Reichl writes.

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Though her mother could make people
sick with her cooking, matzah brei was
a rare recipe she could make well. Even
the Jewish daughter-starved-for-flavor-
turned-successful-cook attests, a mother
helps you become the person you are.

A similar contrast plays out in Elissa
Altman’s latest memoir, “Motherland.”
Altman’s mother, a singer, performer and
TV host, restricts her eating along with
everything else. The author, determined to
live a bigger life, revels in dinners with her
father at French bistros all over Manhattan,
where she learned to be an eater.

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“A mother and a
daughter are an edge.

Edges are places of
danger or opportunity ...

Why can’t they be both?”
ELISSA ALTMAN
The dynamic between the writer
and her frail mother is plagued by co-
dependence. As she forges into a career
and relationship of her own, Altman faces
what she calls Jewish guilt over moving
from New York to Connecticut. That
turns the majority of her visits to phone
calls, and the limits of her caretaking
come at a cost.

“A mother and a daughter are an edge.

Edges are places of danger or opportunity,”
Altman writes. “Why can’t they be both?”
I also listen to “Family Secrets,” a
podcast with Dani Shapiro — a novelist
and essayist raised Orthodox — that
sprouted from the publication of her most
recent memoir, “Inheritance.” A handful
of episodes are enough to bring mothers
(and parents) across the spectrum of
character into the mix.

For Jewish readers, I especially
recommend Arianna Neumann’s episode,
“The Mysterious Boot Club,” or Adam
Frankel’s story, “Bubbe and Zayde and
Grandma and Pa.”
Then there’s Vivian Gornick’s 1987
memoir “Fierce Attachments,” which is
often cited as one of the paradigms of the
genre. She couldn’t have chosen a more
suitable title. l
Babette Dunkelgrün is a native of the Netherlands
who now lives in California. This piece was
originally published at JTA.org.

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