Snapshots by Joyce Carol Oates  and Janet Berliner (eds)

Snapshots

Joyce Carol Oates and Janet Berliner (eds)

Compelling reading here. These short stories themed around the mother-daughter relationship display a range of plots, settings and countries. Consider them individually by dipping in and out rather than reading them one after the other.

Extract
Kiswana watched this meticulous inventory with growing annoyance, but she involuntarily followed her mother's slowly rotating head, forcing her to see her new neighbourhood through the older woman's eyes .... Kiswana noticed with relief that at least Ben wasn't sitting in his usual place on the old garbage can pushed against the far wall. He was just a harmless old wino, but Kiswana knew her mother only needed one wino or teenager with a reefer within a twenty-block radius to decide that her daughter was living in a building seething with dope factories and hangouts for derelicts.
Parallels
  • Mother to Daughter, Daughter to Mother by Tillie Olsen (ed)
  • Kinship Theory by Hester Kaplan