How I Learned to Cook

Rating:
Summary: incredible book!
Review: Anyone with a mother will love this book! The diversity of the mother /daughter relationship could not be more beautifully and often painfully described in this poignant and moving anthology. I found pieces and memories of my mother and myself that I had not revisited and thought were long since gone. The authors in the incredible anthology bravely and fearlessly explore this most primal and complex relationship. Right after I read the book I went out and bought it for my mother and my sisters. I bow down to Margo Perin for the vision to compile such a powerful group of stories and to have the courage to write about her own mother with such honesty. Run, don't walk to get this book!

Rating:
Summary: incredible book!
Review: Anyone with a mother will love this book! The diversity of the mother /daughter relationship could not be more beautifully and often painfully described in this poignant and moving anthology. I found pieces and memories of my mother and myself that I had not revisited and thought were long since gone. The authors in the incredible anthology bravely and fearlessly explore this most primal and complex relationship. Right after I read the book I went out and bought it for my mother and my sisters. I bow down to Margo Perin for the vision to compile such a powerful group of stories and to have the courage to write about her own mother with such honesty. Run, don't walk to get this book!

Rating:
Summary: Awful - Proof that you should ALWAYS read the introduction
Review: If I had read the summation on Amazon or the introduction, I wouldn't have read this book. There may be a good, well written story in this anthology. I doubt it though and I will never know because I have given up. After reading a thoroughly disjointed tale of misuse, lackluster stories about domestic abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and just ill feelings I should have stopped before the one about a father raping his pre-teen daughter, which she doesn't even realize happened. Now I'm just furious that I wasted my time on this book. There was only one that was worth reading and the others made up for it in spades. Save yourself and stay clear!

Rating:
Summary: Attention, Mothers&Daughters, Fathers&Sons
Review: If you are a mother, daughter, father or son you will find something you need to know in this book.

When the topic of "familial abuse" surfaced in my family I did not want to believe it existed. Margo Perin pulls no punches. Abuse happens oftener than any of us would wish. Perin's collection of short memoirs is not just for a daughter to be prodded into saying "Oh yeah..I remember how it was!" Or for a mother to say: 'I wish I had been able to do better." A mother and a son: a father and a daughter: EVERYBODY has some story, and here is a book that will cause you to bring some memories out of the darkness/into the light, if only for a brief painful second: but that second is the beginning of healing...

Rating:
Summary: Attention, Mothers&Daughters, Fathers&Sons
Review: If you are a mother, daughter, father or son you will find something you need to know in this book.

When the topic of "familial abuse" surfaced in my family I did not want to believe it existed. Margo Perin pulls no punches. Abuse happens oftener than any of us would wish. Perin's collection of short memoirs is not just for a daughter to be prodded into saying "Oh yeah..I remember how it was!" Or for a mother to say: 'I wish I had been able to do better." A mother and a son: a father and a daughter: EVERYBODY has some story, and here is a book that will cause you to bring some memories out of the darkness/into the light, if only for a brief painful second: but that second is the beginning of healing...

Rating:
Summary: Myths of Mom
Review: Kudos to Margo Perin for taking the mythical and psuedo-religious sense of the Mother Daughter Relationship out of the closet by showing us the truth. Sometimes Mom isn't loving or nice. Within the scope of these stories we see that our family is our first and most important community. Our young hearts, before they are broken, are wide open and expectant of love, however fragile our connection. Margo Perin has put together a collection of true stories by very talented and brave women who faced the truth of parental abuse and named it while offering healing, hope and love in the same breath.

Rating:
Summary: Finally--a realistic portrayal of a complicated relationship
Review: No, the stories aren't all roses and puppy dogs--but they are realistic, and well-written. Alice Walker, Jamaica Kincaid, Paula Fox, Kim Chernin--an excellent lineup. I was most impressed by the heavy-hitters, like those listed above; but I was also pleasantly surprised to discover new talents, like Elizabeth Payne, whose mother isn't "terrible", but only mysterious and dealing with the pain of a broken marriage. This collection will enlarge your perspective on your own relationship with Mom.

Rating:
Summary: a must for those that love complex mother/daughter relations
Review: Review by Summer Lopez for Small Spiral Notebook:

When we are very little, we see our mothers only as we want to see them-all powerful and perfect. The older we get, the more we realize how untrue-and unfair-that perception is. How I Learned to Cook is a gripping look at the truth about mothers and daughters, and the matchless strength of the bonds we share. That is not to say it is a book full of heartwarming mother-daughter tales. The authors of these stories have reached deep into the vaults of their childhood memories, often exposing pain but always revealing the powerful affect of their mothers in their lives. As adults, they are able to look back and see their mothers as the very real and often very flawed women that they were and are. In some cases the scars of childhood are strong, and one can sense that the writer is still seeking answers and explanations, but in other stories there is an echo of love strengthened through time and understanding. None of these mothers is one-dimensionally caring or cruel, and this lovely and heartbreaking anthology is full of the explorations of this most complex of relationships.

Perin points out in the Introduction that fear of betraying or demeaning the image of the mother or one's own mother has kept many women from telling the truth of the pain inflicted on them in childhood by women who were supposed to protect them from all things. How I Learned to Cook brings some such examples painfully to life. There is Ruth Kluger's mother who, upon arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau, calmly suggests to Ruth that they go together and throw themselves against the electric fencing. Or Hillary Gamerow's, who tells her young daughter simply one night that she has put rat poison in the family's dinner, and that they will all die in their sleep. When that turns out not to be true, she says, "Well, you never know. I could do it anytime, right?" Then there is the mother in "The Body Geographic," who watches with a gleam of satisfaction as her husband beats her daughter senseless. One cannot help but admire the bravery it must have taken for these women to tell their stories. They are kick-in-the-gut painful, to the point where it is often hard to believe they are real, but they are also gripping and written with lyricism touched with a grief that seeps through the pages.

There are other stories here too; stories where societal expectations and other outside forces shape the nature of the relationship between mother and daughter. Nawal el Saadawi tells of being raised in Egypt, her mother's love separated from her by a veil that is both literal and figurative. In "Home is Where Your Stuff Is" Helen Ruggieri describes her mother's obsession with cleaning and maintaining the "stuff" in her house-her attention to the domestic space she can control seemingly overtaking her ability to focus on the people living within it. In "Anybody Could See It" Elizabeth Payne reflects on her father's infidelity to her mother and the way both women struggled to recover from that betrayal. "Domestic Silence" tells the story of Meena's attempts to rescue her unwilling mother from her abusive marriage, leaving her feeling that she has been the caretaker all along, rather than the other way around.

The beauty of these stories is the authors' willingness to be honest, whether they are sharing the depth of love and respect they feel for the multi-faceted women that brought them into the world, or their deep-seated pain and anger at the betrayal of what we often view as the most natural of bonds. In most cases the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes, where real relationships exist in all their intricacies.

* Odds are this book will make you appreciate your own mother (I felt compelled to call mine and thank her for being wonderful), but I should point out it's not exactly the ideal Mother's Day gift...stick with flowers and keep this one for yourself.