Cathi Hanauer is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels—Gone, Sweet Ruin, and My Sister’s Bones—and two anthologies, The Bitch in the House and The Bitch Is Back, which was an NPR Best Book of 2016. She’s written articles, essays, and criticism for the New York Times, Elle, O, the Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, and many other publications, and is the cofounder, along with her husband, Daniel Jones, of the New York Times Modern Love column. Find her at www.cathihanauer.com.
Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams, as well as a novel, The Gin Closet, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and her work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, the Atlantic, Oxford American, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, where she is an editor at large. She directs the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Dylan Landis is the author of a collection of linked stories, Normal People Don’t Live Like This, and a novel, Rainey Royal Her stories have appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Nonrequired Reading series, and her essays in the New York Times Book Review and Harper’s She has received a fellowship in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Kiese Laymon is the author of Heavy: An American Memoir, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and Long Division He is also a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Mississippi.
Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a World Fantasy Award, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and was the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, a Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “Fifteen remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the twenty-first century.” Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She is the writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.
Bernice L. McFadden is the author of nine critically acclaimed novels, including Sugar, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), Glorious, and The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction). She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA). Praise Song for the Butterflies is her latest novel.
Nayomi Munaweera is the award-winning author of the novels Island of a Thousand Mirrors and What Lies Between Us The Huffington Post has said, “Munaweera’s prose is visceral and indelible, devastatingly beautiful—reminiscent of the glorious writings of Louise Erdrich, Amy Tan, and Alice Walker, who also find ways to truth-tell through fiction.” The New York Times Book Review called her first novel “incandescent.” She wants you to know that the essay in this book is the hardest thing she’s written yet.
Lynn Steger Strong is the author of the novel Hold Still Her nonfiction has appeared in Guernica, Los Angeles Review of Books, Elle, Catapult, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Columbia University, Fairfield University, and the Pratt Institute.
Brandon Taylor is a student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in fiction. His debut novel is forthcoming from Riverhead Books.
About the Editor
© SYLVIE ROSOKOFF
Michele Filgate’s work has appeared on Longreads, in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, The Paris Review Daily, Tin House, Gulf Coast, O: The Oprah Magazine, BuzzFeed, Refinery29, and other publications. Currently she is an MFA student at NYU, where she is the recipient of the Stein Fellowship. She is a contributing editor at Literary Hub and teaches at the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop and Catapult. What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About is her first book.
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Permissions
Introduction copyright © 2019 and “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About” copyright © 2019 by Michele Filgate
“My Mother’s (Gate) Keeper” copyright © 2019 by Cathi Hanauer
“Thesmophoria” copyright © 2019 by Melissa Febos
“Xanadu” copyright © 2019 by Alexander Chee
“16 Minetta Lane” copyright © 2019 by Dylan Landis
“Fifteen” copyright © 2019 by Bernice L. McFadden
“Nothing Left Unsaid” copyright © 2019 by Julianna Baggott
“The Same Story About My Mom” copyright © 2019 by Lynn Steger Strong
“While These Things / Feel American to Me” copyright © 2019 by Kiese Laymon
“Mother Tongue” copyright © 2019 by Carmen Maria Machado
“Are You Listening?” copyright © 2014 by André Aciman
“Brother, Can You Spare Some Change?” copyright © 2019 by Sari Botton
“Her Body / My Body” copyright © 2019 by Nayomi Munaweera
“All About My Mother” copyright © 2018 by Brandon Taylor
“I Met Fear on the Hill” copyright © 2019 by Leslie Jamison
The following stories were reprinted with permission:
“What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About” was previously published on Longreads on October 9, 2017
“All About My Mother” was previously published on Lit Hub on August 1, 2018
“Are You Listening” was previously published in The New Yorker on March 17, 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Filgate, Michele, editor.
Title: What my mother and I don’t talk about : Fifteen writers break the sile
nce / edited by Michele Filgate.
Description: New York : Simon & Schuster, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018053899 (print) | LCCN 2018057436 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982107369 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982107345 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781982107352 (trade pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Mother and child. | Mothers. | Parent and adult child.
Classification: LCC HQ759 (ebook) | LCC HQ759 .W4554 2019 (print) | DDC 306.874/3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018053899
ISBN 978-1-9821-0734-5
ISBN 978-1-9821-0736-9 (ebook)
What My Mother and I Don't Talk About Page 21