Chapters in this book

1. Front Matter i
2. Contents v
3. Acknowledgments ix
4. Introduction 1
5. In the Shadow of the Mother
6. “I Had Embarked on Something Called Self-Invention” 19
7. “The Way I Became a Writer Was That My Mother Wrote My Life for Me and Told It to Me” 37
8. “As I Looked at This Sentence a Great Wave of Shame Came over Me and I Wept and Wept” 67
9. A Very Personal Politics
10. “Imagine the Bitterness and the Shame in Me as I Tell You This” 91
11. Family Portraits
12. “I Would Bear Children, but I Would Never Be a Mother to Them” 115
13. “I Shall Never Forget Him Because His Life Is the One I Did Not Have” 143
14. “Like Him and His Own Father before Him, I Have a Line Drawn through Me” 165
15. Conclusion: “I Am Writing for Solace” 181
16. Notes 191
17. Works Cited 221
18. Index 233