In My Mother's House: A Daughter's Story

I came into the world as my mother's listener, saturated in the broodings, misunderstandings, visions of a life that had begun in the first year of the twentieth century. . . . [The two world] wars, the revolutions that followed them, the sufferings that gave rise to them, had made their way into my mother's stories, along with the lost world of European Jewish life (Chernin xi).

The book, then, is certainly the story of how the author's life is shaped by her mother, and by her mother's stories, but it is finally more about her own stories and the meaning they give to her experiences.

The unique adventures of her mother's life make the author's own life unique, and seem to make her life and family realities markedly different from my own. In comparison, my own life, and particularly my mother's influence and my relationship with her, seem quite different, at least on the surface. At first glance, it would seem that my own life and relationship with my mother were fairly prosaic, compared with the exc

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reality depicted by Allende, I realize i both long for and fear a more vital and unpredictably mysterious spiritual reality in my own life. The supernatural is often taken completely in stride, as when Carla "would announce earthquakes in advance, which was quite useful in that country of catastrophes, for it gave them a chance to lock up the good dishes and place their slippers within reach in case they had to run out in the middle of the night" (Allende 8). This calm acceptance of the mysteries of the spiritual world also appeals to me. However, at times the visions of supernatural phenomena are clearly meant to be taken more seriously, as when Clara and Esteban are dancing at the party where their engagement is announced and Clara is "completely oblivious to the warnings of the spirits that gestured desperately at her from the curtains" (Allende 90). The murder of the great dog Barrabas was occurring at that very moment, but so swept up in the festivities is Clara that she is temporarily beyond the reach of the supernatural warning being sent her way. In another incident, Clara predicts that a man was going to cheat her father in a business deal, but her father ignores the prediction and is indeed swindled. The suggestion
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Some common words found in the essay are:
South American, Isabel Allende, American Indian, European Jewish, Compared Chernin, Mama Day, Christine Catholic, Clara Esteban, Sapphira Wade, Daughter's Story, own life, lives characters, own stories, read book, american indian, allende's novel, magical realism, beginning book, own spiritual, chernin mother, american indian women, novel tradition magical, spirituality deep paradoxes, yellow raft blue, world world spirits,
Approximate Word count = 4412
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page)

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