Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers Book

Ever read a book and wonder about the writer, what made them capable? Ever wish you could peek at the household of a writer and get in on the family fights, the favorite foods, the shocking secrets, the comfortingly familiar, the strange and curious, the ups and downs, the dizzying array of emotions and behaviors and freak occurrence and surprise guests and variety acts all appearing on the Mom Show? Consider this your invite, your unexpected prize.
This anthology is so well-conceived (pun intended) and well-constructed (brick house!) that you will marvel at your own stupidity if you almost didn't read it. Not only will you meet the mothers of twenty-one fabulous writers and get TMI or not enough, you will have something credible with which to frame your own reference to the M and illuminate your thoughts. True, just a couple of these essays strain the cred for a sec with fictional techniques and dialog, otherwise the whole experience of this read is authentic, compelling, intelligent and capable of surprise.

The mother of Hmong refugee Ka Vang is greeted by exploding grenades on her wedding day, hurled by the jealous first wife of her polygamist bridegroom. "She had her weapons, her sons, the most prized possession in a Hmong family." This character was forged by heavy fire, her mother having only daughters. Another writer visits the deathbed of her estranged mother who leaves her with the last words, "I guess, if you want to think you're a lesbian, that's okay," and then "Have a nice life." The mother of Faith Sullivan ditched her at Grandma's where she was raised by ghosts. Yet how comforting they are, how nurturing, how encouraging and friendly. I, too, have a green-painted cupboard, called a Hoosier, to store mysterious Mason jars of dried roots and leaves and seeds. "Today, Grandma would be called an herbalist. In 1600, she'd have been a witch." Her friends and relatives The Girls are old and man-less, sensible and frugal and off their rockers, too. " This the kind of company I'd aspire to. "Never was a family so crammed with saints, sinners, eccentrics, whimsicals, horse thieves, and undiscovered geniuses." Bet ya.

Other portraits resonate with familiar scenes and struggles and place-culture, such as the searingly poetic Dakota Woman rendered by Susan Power with tragedy and nobility and subtle humor. Oddly enough my own mother also appears in an Indian princess costume with headband and braids, but her photo is something from the basement of the county historical museum that has comical and "Oh no, you found it" connotations. Heid Erdrich then explains why there are no Indian princesses anyhow.

While the familiar can inform and enrich our view of motherhood and its complicated questions and epiphanies, the strange and alien household cultures which I encountered in this book did the same making possible connections to the greater world, starting with the foreign land of Minnesota which we here in "The Dakotas" (Minnesotans often refer to even a very specific place as such) often consider to be Back East on the other side of the Red. The diversity of ethnic and other influences is done no mean justice in these writings, ably reflecting that there is more than blonde hair and blue eyes and lefse and lutefisk going on over there. The literary Mecca of the Twin Cities is nicely represented here in this collection.

Gentle Reader, this is a box of dark chocolates and you'll find no frothy filling. It does contain some nuts. But go ahead and devour the whole she-bang, it is good for you!