Mother Millett
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.67 (780 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1859846076 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 260 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 0000-00-00 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
In these pages are reflections on a life of political engagement, beginning with the sexual politics of the feminist movement, proceeding to the struggle for gay liberation, and culminating in her campaign for housing rights on the Lower East Side of New York where she and her neighbors currently face eviction. Kate Millett’s tremulous and hauntingly beautiful memoir begins with a telephone call from Minnesota where her mother is dying. Her return home to a severe, intelligent, and controlling matriarch is the catalyst for a meditation on her upbringing in middle America and her subsequent outcast status as a political activist, artist, and lesbian.Mother Millett is an intensely personal journey through the author’s interior life, a subject she has visited over the years in such classic texts as Sita and The Loony Bin Trip. Throughout, Millett confronts her fears of losing her mother, the anchor to a world she has long ago rejected but which continues to define her.Echoing Philip Roth’s Patrimony, Millett
Melanchthon said At the end of the book you love the book and despise Kate M.. This book is really gripping. I started it late at night and couldn't put it down until I finished. Millett's description of her mother and the differences in perception (what the hospital thinks about her mother, what her sister thinks, what she thinks) are fascinating, as is the way that she details how nursing homes aggregate power to themselves. If you are thinking of nursing home care for aged parents, this would be a good book for you to read; it is well written and baldly presents some of the real dangers involved in powers of attorney for the elderly. I have to say, though, tha. Do unto your mother S. B. Greenwood This book is a powerful testament to the pain and difficulty of doing the right thing instead of the easy thing. I read Millett's Loony-bin Trip many years ago, and found it terrifying and devastating in its look at the powerlessness of those who fall outside our cultural boundary of "sanity." Here she's looking at the powerlessness of that growing American fringe culture--the old and unwanted. It's easy to imagine the dark pleasure of revenge available in this situation. Millett's mother was less than supportive or helpful when she needed support and help. I found myself incredibly mo. Rough sledding, but a worthwhile ride! Baby boomers especially will find much stimulation in these ponderings on learning to manage ageing, infirmity, family strife, duty, and forgiveness. Kate Millett faced a lot in living through and then writing about the lessons of this book. While not everyone will agree with her choices (or her politics!?) she still presents a coherent story that moved and involved me and I was gratified at her success in liberating her mother from the nursing home, as well as liberating HERSELF from many of her own personal demons. Everyone feels SOME ambivalence towards their parents, and if we assu
It was that experience, documented in Millett's The Loony Bin Trip, that made it impossible for her to agree to her mother's incarceration in St. Paul to attend to her dying mother, she thought it might be her last such journey. There is ample irony hereMother Millett had, after all, signed the commitment papers that had placed daughter Kate in a psychiatric ward years before. As she struggles to redeem her mother and return her to her beloved Manhattan apartment, Millett's conflicts with nursing-home managers, her own family and her sense of failure and self-doubt become a kind of universal history of children and aged parents in an America where the needs of the elderly commonly take second place to those of their families.