Songs My Mother Taught Me follows the narrator, confronted with the imminent death of her mother, on a voyage to share the final leg of their lifelong journey together. With candor and lucidity, she retraces the passage from childhood to womanhood under the powerful influence of a loving but suffocating mother. Told by a daughter who has carried all her life the epigenetic endowment inherited from her parents’ experiences during the Holocaust, this raw and painfully honest story digs into the complexities and subtleties of love. Having spent most of her life traveling the globe in an attempt to escape this legacy, the narrator finds herself back in the house she grew up in, where she tries to finally piece together, and find peace with, the looming shadows of her family’s past.
This epic and lyrical tale spans from Transylvania in the 1930s to modernday
Tel Aviv, Tokyo, New York, and Paris—giving a literary voice to those
affected by PTSD transmitted down the generations.
Songs My Mother Taught Me follows protagonist on her final voyage to see her dying mother, who is hissing and kicking all the way to the grave. Having spent decades trying to escape her heritage by constantly moving around the globe--Tokyo, New York, then Paris--the narrator finds herself back in the house she grew up in. She is confronted with the epigenetical endowment inherited from her parents' experiences and has to come to peace with the looming shadows of the past. An epic and lyrical tale that spans from Transylvania in the 1930s through Scarsdale, NY to present-day Europe, Songs My Mother Taught Me touches upon questions of identity, immigration, and PTSD transmitted down the generations--giving voice to those who grew up in the aftermath of their parents' trauma.