Research Catalog

Grand mothers : poems, reminiscences, and short stories about the keepers of our traditions

Title: Grand mothers : poems, reminiscences, and short stories about the keepers of our traditions / edited by Nikki Giovanni.
Publication: New York : Holt, 1994.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	PZ5 .G6955 1994	Off-site

Additional Authors

Giovanni, Nikki.

Description

xxi, 168 pages; 21 cm

Summary

Not just children. In this wide-ranging collection of women's thoughts on their grandmothers, Nikki Giovanni shows what a crucial role elder women play in carrying traditions across generations. Starting with her own memories of "the days Louvenia Watson made bread pudding you could smell a block away," she introduces the full spectrum of emotions that grandmothers inspire.
We see strong grandmothers healing the sick, wearing cowboy hats, and piloting steamboats; we meet silent grandmothers and formidable ones; we follow granddaughters as they say last good-byes and as they search for traces of unknown grandmothers in scraps of paper and faded photographs. Through the ladder of generations we are carried back to World War I, to the Civil War, and even through a few great, greats, to the American Revolution.
Nikki Giovanni created this book by asking her friends for their stories and recollections - people like Gloria Naylor and Gwendolyn Brooks - but then went to a group of women in their nineties for their special thoughts. A testament to the bonds that tie us together across time, and an inspiration for all of us to gather the legacies of our own families, this is a book with the quiet wisdom, the loving stories, and the tinge of sadness of a talk with a wise and wonderful Grand Mother.

Alternative Title

Grandmothers.

Subject

Contents

Introduction / Nikki Giovanni -- My Grandmother Is Waiting for Me to Come Home / Gwendolyn Brooks -- Listening With Her Heart / Virginia C. Fowler -- A Conspiracy of Grace / Ethel Morgan Smith -- The Roofwalker / Susan Power -- A Loss in Detroit / Sharon Dilworth -- Grandma / Erin Khue Ninh -- The Magical Grandmother / Maxine Hong Kingston -- Telling Tales and Mississippi Sunsets / Gloria Naylor -- My Grandmothers / Mildred Bollinger Andrews -- Going to Krogers / Nance Van Winckel -- Seeking Polly, Pretty Polly, Poor Polly, or The Granddaughter Seeks to Remember What the Grandfathers Sought to Forget / Daryl Cumber Dance -- Ba-Chan / Anna Esaki-Smith -- My Two Grandmothers / Arlynn S. Geers -- My Emotional Grandmother / Doris Moore -- A Union of Confederates / Anna W. Kenney -- My Russian Grandmother / Rosel Schewel -- Grandmother / Ellison Smythe -- A Grandmotherless Child / Kathleen Carroll Bailey Angle -- Grandmother / Kyoko Mori -- I Have a Memory Trace / Mary King.
My Grandmother Was a Great Person / Deidre Hair -- My Grandmother / Ruth Rambo -- Captain Mary B. Greene / L. Jane Greene -- A Different Kind of Starch / Elizabeth Isele -- The Sunday Dinner That Got Away / Margra Hyde -- My French Great-Grandmother / Dorothy A. Schueler -- Mama Dear / Yolande Giovanni.

ISBN

0805027661 (acid-free paper) :

LCCN

94006144

OCLC

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries