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Product Details
Touchstone, April 2009
Trade Paperback, 272 pages
ISBN-10: 1416543066
ISBN-13: 9781416543060
Description
After her mother's death, Alyse Myers covets only one thing: a wooden box that sits in the back of a closet. Its contents have been kept from her for her entire life. When she was thirteen years old her mother promised she could have the box, "when I'm dead. In fact, it'll be my present to you."
Growing up in Queens in the 1960s and '70s, Alyse always yearned for more in life, while her mother settled for an unhappy marriage, an unsatisfying job, and ultimately a joyless existence. Her father drifts in and out of their home. There are harrowing fights, abject cruelty, and endless uncertainty. Throughout her childhood Alyse adamantly rejects everything about her mother's lifestyle, leaving her mother to ask "Who do you think you are?"
A personal portrait of a mother and daughter, Who Do You Think You Are? explores the profound and poignant revelations that so often can come to light only after a parent has died. Balancing childhood memories with adult observations, Alyse Myers creates a riveting and deeply moving narrative.
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Browse Inside Who Do You Think You Are?"Here's a book so honest it won't let you off the hook. You may not realize it during the early pages, but it's a book about love. Indeed, it's a story where love is redefined, and even though it traces the sometimes unbearable relationship of mother and daughter, there are insights here for all of us. And the writing is masterly, taut, honest, and strangely satisfying."
-- Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes
"The moving story...pleasantly old-fashioned...touching, even tender, record of Myer's thorny mother's difficult life raising three girls alone."-The New York Times
"Myers provides a moving lesson. This journey has universal resonance for myriad readers."-LibraryJournal.com (starred)
Blogcritics.org, April 14, 2009
...To get a feeling for the memoir Who Do You Think You Are? you need only to imagine a vicious, violent, argument where those words are hurled at another person to wound them deeply. In this story, a ...
