In the essay "Dreams of Her Real Self," the Australian writer Helen Garner performs the difficult task of honestly appraising her mother. Difficult because love and honesty may be at odds; it is discomfiting to outgrow your parents, to feel more intelligent or more sophisticated than they are, as if you were somehow robbing them of a gift that they already gave you. And careful observation can be so close to mockery: "She used to wear hats that pained me," Garner writes. "Shy little round beige felt hats with narrow brims.... And she stood with her feet close together, in sensible shoes." Garner admits that she finds it hard to get her mother into focus, in part because her overbearing father did such a good job of blocking the view, "as he blocked her horizon," and in part because her mother's hesitant self-effacement rendered her both genuinely obscure and obscurely irritating: "She seemed astonished that someone should be interested in her." To be her intellectual superior, Garner writes, "was unbearable." Yet she also admits to the guilty pleasure of refusing her mother the easy concessions that she knows will make her happy. An intimate portrait expands naturally into a social and political sketch: daughter and mother represent not only different generations but different examples of female ambition and opportunity.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.