My mother's daughter : finding myself in my family's fractured past / Tracy Clark-Flory.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clark-Flory, Tracy, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Clark-Flory, Tracy.

Journalists--United States--Biography.

Journalists.

Maternity homes.

Sisters.

Multiracial people.

Mothers and daughters.

sisters (siblings).

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

viii, 274 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First Gallery Books hardcover edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Gallery Books, 2026.

Summary:

"From the journalist and author of the memoir Want Me: A Sex Writer's Journey into the Heart of Desire (an NPR Best Book of the Year) comes a story of family secrets, sisterhood, and unraveling the inheritance and generational trauma mothers pass on to their daughters. Tracy Clark-Flory always knew that her mom, Deb, had gotten pregnant as a teenager in the Midwest in the 1960s, twenty years before Tracy was born. She also knew that Deb was sent to a home for unwed mothers, where her baby was placed for adoption, before being committed to a mental institution in her grief. When her mom died, Tracy was left with big questions and the shadow of a sister out there, somewhere. Then, Tracy takes a DNA test and finds her: Kathy. The two quickly fall into the profound relief of connecting after all this time. They go on to find Kathy's father, learning that he met their mother while on student exchange from Nigeria. With Kathy's encouragement, Tracy sets out to understand what had happened back in 1965. She learns that her mom had been pulled into a system meant to control women's sexuality and bolster the nuclear family norm, penalizing these "bad" women for having sex outside of marriage (and in Tracy's mom's case, with someone of a different race). Tracy realizes how much her own life has been shaped by her mom's past. She tried to run from it as a sex writer and as an adventurous young woman grasping for "sexual empowerment," but she has still inherited her mom's shame, along with the world that shamed her. The story that Tracy uncovers is bigger than her family, and speaks to centuries of sexual and reproductive control, as well as mother-daughter relationships and family secrets that resonate through generations"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Prologue: shame

Down the hall

The call

Scarlet letter

Feelings wheel

Good and bad

Our mom

Rapunzel

Sorry about her

Uterine scream

Unusual women

Hey sis!!

Laws of physics

A different kind of falling

Opposite of shame

A crossroads

Dots.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-274).

ISBN:

9781668083321

1668083329

OCLC:

1547287429

Publisher Number:

90104514693