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Between Mothers and Sons
by Patricia Stevens
List Price: 14.95
Price: 13.45

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Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Scribner Paper Fiction; 1st Touchstone Ed (May 02 2001)
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Read an Excerpt

Sons as Teachers
It is the late 1980s, an unseasonably hot Saturday afternoon in May, with only a few weeks left in the school year. A water war is about to erupt in my backyard. Six boys ranging in age from ten to thirteen are dividing into two opposing groups.

Chapter 4: Watching Star Trek with Dylan
Upstairs on the bridge my husband, the first officer, is at his station cooking up that brand of boxed macaroni and cheese inexplicably yet consistently preferred by the human young, and slicing bananas under the steady gaze of his commanding officer.

Chapter 4: Watching Star Trek with Dylan, Part 2
So, what can I do to nurture my son, this practically alien being? One thing I can do is let him watch Star Trek, or what he recognizes in it, I am now sure, is the plain truth about his destiny.



Book Description

"The challenge for mothers of sons is to realize that because we do not share a sexual identity, that because we have not grown up in a male body, we cannot presume to understand everything there is to know about our sons' worlds."

— Patricia Stevens

Between Mothers and Sons is the first anthology in which women writers attempt to answer the question that all mothers have contemplated in the course of mothering the opposite sex: "Tho is this male child who came out of my body?"T Or, as a pregnant Mary Gordon said when her doctor told her she was having a boy, "Oh, my God. What am I supposed to do with one of them?"T

From the earliest days of nursing to the good-byes of college and looming adulthood, these writers collectively explore, in a thrilling range of styles and sensibilities, the delights and frustrations, the deep and often conflicted emotions, they feel in their roles as mothers to their male children. Between Mothers and Sons resoundingly and unflinchingly celebrates this journey we are all making with our boys.

With essays from:

Julene Bair, Janet Burroway, Robb Forman Dew
Deborah Galyan, Mary Gordon, Joy Harjo, Anne Lamott
Susan Lester, Jo-Ann Mapson, Leigh McKinley
Valerie Monroe, Naomi Shihab Nye, Eileen Pollack
Jewell Parker Rhodes, Patricia Stevens, Sallie Tilsdale
Kris Vervaecke, Patricia Williams

About the Author

Patricia Stevens

Patricia Stevens has written essays that appear in Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul as well as in The Healing Circle: Authors Writing of Recovery. She has received the James Michener Fellowship and the Nelson Algren Short Story Award. She is the mother of two sons and lives in Portland, Oregon..

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