Wife, daughter, self

Summary: "How are we shaped by the people we love? Who are we when we think no one else is watching? How do we trust the choices we make? The answers shift as the years go by. The stories remake themselves as we remember. Curiously, inventively, Beth Kephart reflects on the iterative, composite self in her new memoir-traveling to lakes and rivers, New Mexico and Mexico, the icy waters of Alaska and a hot-air balloon launch in search of understanding. She is accompanied, often, by her Salvadoran-artist husband. She spends time, a lot of time, with her widowed father. As she looks at them she ponders herself and comes to terms with the person she is still becoming. At once sweeping and intimate, Wife | Daughter | Self is a memoir built of interlocking essays by an acclaimed author, teacher, and critic"--

Record details

ISBN: 9781942436447
ISBN: 1942436440
ISBN: 9781942436454
Physical Description: print
252 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Publisher: Portland, Oregon : Forest Avenue Press, [2021]

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:

Wife. Prefatory ; Lily lake ; The short version ; The longer version ; Paynes gray ; Why I never learned to speak my husband's language ; Double parentheses ; A shelter for the truth ; For as long as we have -- Daughter. Prefatory ; Cut the light ; Lessons in soft and hard sounds ; This blue jaunt ; Family resemblance ; Break down ; Here if you need me ; Panic attack ; The weight of my confessions ; There are nice people here -- Self. Prefatory ; Clean ; The age of innocence ; Second coming ; Then I am not a writer ; Then try these on for size ; Baby shoes ; The four times I became a teacher ; The apostrophe wife ; Why I never learned to speak your language ; Caw ; When he goes ; When he comes back ; Collisions ; Ideas of happiness ; Fixing beauty -- After word.