Alvarez, Julia. “Daughter of Invention.” Growing Up Latino, Memoirs and Stories. Ed. Harold Augenbraum and Ilan Stavans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, l993. 3-15. This is the study of how a mother has the added challenge of not only
being a wife and mother but also serving as the cultural interpreter for her four daughters and her husband, as they make the transition from living in the Dominican Republic to the United States.
Cooper, J. California. “The Watcher.” Homemade Love. New York: St. Martin’s Press, l986. 93-98. A woman, in the name of God and community, is so obsessed with minding the business of her neighbors that she, not only ruins many of
their lives and drives them away, but she grossly neglects her own children and drives her own husband away.
Olsen, Tillie. “I Stand Here Ironing.” Fictions. 2nd ed. Ed. Joseph F. Trimmer and C. Wade Jennings. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1989. 978-984. A mother literally stands ironing, while she struggles to examine,
with considerable guilt, the consequences for her teen-age daughter, resulting from decisions and choices she, a single mother, had to make regarding raising her, from the time her daughter was born.
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Fictions. 2nd ed. Ed. Joseph F. Trimmer and C. Wade Jennings. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, l989.
A poor, Southern, rural, black woman narrates the story of the spiritual pain she and her daughter, Maggie, suffer resulting from the disparity between her two daughters, Maggie, a homely, reclusive, illiterate, young woman who lives with her mother, and Dee, the daughter who pushed her way out, went to college, and has, for all intents and purposes, left her mother and sister behind, spiritually and geographically.
Yamaoto, Hisaye. “Seventeen Syllables.” Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories. Latham, New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1998. 8-19. The mother and wife of a very traditional Japanese man finds another identity in
writing and publishing haiku. But to her horror, her traditional husband gradually is driven to rage by her commitment to her new career.
How to Make an American Quilt, dir. Jocelyn Moorhouse, with, Universal City Studios, l995. A group of women come together for their annual quilting bee to sew a wedding quilt for the granddaughter of one of the women. As they create
the squares for the quilt, they tell, in flashbacks, their stories of how, as young women, they met and married their husbands, and how their marriages evolved.
