Framing a Life: A Family Memoir

When the mother of former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro was in the hospital with emphysema, she was asked for her educational history. She replied that she'd graduated from elementary school, "Big deal, huh?" she shrugged, embarrassed. Realizing her hardworking immigrant mother's feelings of shame, Ferraro determined to write a tribute to her life, "to correct," she tells readers, "my mother's impression of herself as no big deal, and also to correct the nation's dismissal of the contribution of immigrant women."

Ferraro's obvious admiration for her mother, the daughter of Italian immigrants to New York, marks every chapter of this paean to maternal fortitude and sacrifice. Ferraro describes the close bond between the two women, her mother's determination to ensure the prosperous future of her children, and the daughter's sometimes amusingly protective attitudes toward her aging mother. Nevertheless, the anecdotes in this book hang not on the frame of her mother's life, but on the author's own. The details of Ferraro's schooling, her family life as mother and wife, and her rise to political prominence as Walter Mondale's running mate in the 1984 presidential elections offer proof that the elder Ferraro's sacrifice was, in fact, worth quite a lot. --Maria Dolan