Who Do You Think You Are?: A Memoir
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At the heart of this powerful memoir is a compelling mystery. Shortly after Alyse Myers's mother dies, Alyse and her two sisters are emptying their mother's apartment, trying to decide what to discard and what to keep. Alyse covets only one thing a wooden box that sits in the back of the closet. Its contents have been kept from Alyse her entire life. That box, she hopes, will contain answers to her questions: Who were her parents really, and why did her mother settle for so very little in life? We are then transported back in time to the 1960s, to a working-class neighborhood in Queens, New York. It is not a happy home. Alyse's parents are young and good-looking, but they constantly veer between their mutual attraction and contempt. Her parents argue bitterly about everything money, family, and her father's constant sickness. Her father drifts in and out of their apartment, and what his illness portends is never discussed. After he dies, Alyse's mother, at age thirty-three, retreats to the kitchen table with her cigarettes and resentment, detemined to stay there forever. Alyse, on the other hand, yearns for more in life, including the right to escape. After a childhood of harrowing fights, abject cruelty, and endless uncertainty, Alyse adamantly rejects everything about her mother's life, provoking her mother's infuriated demand, "Who do you think you are?" A heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting portrait of a mother and daughter, Who Do You Think You Are? explores the profound and poignant revelations that often come to light only after a parent has died. Balancing childhood memories with adult observations, Alyse Myers writes with candor and eloquence of her journey to adulthood. Her story's power lies in its simplicity and the emotions it conjures up in the reader. No matter what your relationship with own mother is like, this book will stay with you long after you put it down. The New York Times - Jennifer Gilmore Who Do You Think You Are? is pleasantly old-fashioned, written in simple prose that allows the narrator insights into events as she ages…Yet what emerges from the single-layered narration is a touching, even tender, record of her thorny mother's difficult life raising three girls alone with few resources.
