Product Description

When Carol Saline and Sharon J. Wohlmuth created Sisters in 1994, they took America by storm, captivating countless readers with their poignant exploration of sisterhood.  In this beautiful new volume, they turn their empathy and perception to a territory perhaps even more intimate--the intense connection shared by mothers and daughters.

The profoundly personal experiences of the women portrayed in these original essays and photographs illuminate a relationship that is awe-inspiring in its power and depth.  Some of these women are well known: Cindy Crawford, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Margaret Atwood, and Jamie Lee Curtis all speak of their own relationships in these pages.  There is also wisdom to be found in the words of a ninety-six-year-old great-grandmother with her nine daughters; a mother and daughter who have fled the war in Bosnia for an uncertain future in New York; and a woman who received a kidney transplant as a last gift from her dying mother.  Whether the speakers are famous or not, their stories and portraits express universal feelings of tenderness, pride, and a love so fierce that it is sometimes painful.  Mothers and Daughters is a stunning and evocative tribute to this unbreakable bond.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #735629 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04-14
• Released on: 1997-04-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

From Amazon.com
Carol Saline and Sharon J. Wohlmuth once again explore the familial bonds of women in this charming follow-up to their 1994 smash hit Sisters. In words and pictures, Mothers and Daughters reveals the varied and perennial nature of this complicated family bond. Most of the daughters in this collection are adult women. Some are stepchildren, others adopted from other nations, and still others, including model Cindy Crawford, author Margaret Atwood, and cartoonist Cathy Guisewite, are famous. Wohlmuth's posed, black-and-white photos of the two generations reveal relationships that rival the intensity of romance. In these pictures, some mothers curl protectively around their daughters, some of the women stand side-by-side, embracing like old friends, and occasionally the subjects stand apart from one another, like partners in a difficult marriage. Saline's interviews probe delicately beneath the surface of the portraits. "Do you love your mother, Jacki?" Saline asks one subject, who answers, "without question." But when Saline asks, "Do you like your mother?" Jacki replies more ambiguously: "Well...." This book will inspire mothers and daughters to reflect on the importance of their own relationship. --Maria Dolan

From Booklist
Saline and Wohlmuth's Sisters (1994) was a surprise best-seller. Its combination of Wohlmuth's sensitive portrait photography and journalist Saline's profiles, People magazine^-like but better, of female siblings proved to have a market eagerly awaiting it. A wised-up Doubleday plans a 450,000-copy first printing and publicity to match for Sisters' sequel, which presents 38 maternal relationships. The 38 encompass pretty nearly every imaginable set of relational circumstances: solid "traditional" families, lesbian comothers, single mothers, daughters caring for elderly mothers, a mother caring for her mentally impaired 25-year-old daughter, and even a daughter with both an adoptive mother and a recently met birth mother. There are several mothers and daughters who follow the same profession or are partners in the same endeavor. A few are famous, in one generation (e.g., cartoonist Cathy Guisewite and her mother, actress Lynn Redgrave and her two daughters) or both (e.g., actress Janet Leigh and her daughter, actress Jamie Leigh Curtis), but some of the best stories are those of "ordinary" women. What's more, Wohlmuth's photographic skill makes every woman and girl in the book a beauty. Ray Olson

From Kirkus Reviews
The creators of the hugely bestselling Sisters offer a survey and celebration of the complex bonds between mothers and daughters. Saline's terse descriptions of 37 mother/daughter pairs, drawing heavily on the women's own (sometimes very frank) words, are accompanied by Wohlmuth's sensitive, tightly cropped black-and- white photographs of the families in question. The relationships described here range widely, from the deeply loving and supportive to more troubled and uncertain connections: A mother and daughter from Bosnia reflect on the love that has helped preserve them; adopted daughters, and women raised by stepmothers, discuss the profound impact their mothers have had on their disrupted lives; a woman with a double mastectomy talks about the ways in which her small daughters have given her back her self-respect; a woman in her 60s describes what life is like caring for her bedridden mother. There are some famous figures here (Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis, Cindy Crawford, Margaret Atwood, Ruth Bader Ginsburg), but the most powerful and affecting stories are those told by less prominent figures--activists, reporters, businesswomen, farmers, and housewives. (First printing of 350,000; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.