Every Woman I'Ve Ever Loved: Lesbian Writers on Their Mothers

In her introduction to this collection of essays, Catherine Reid suggests that the complications of mother-child relationships are more intensified and distilled for lesbians than for others, because both our own bodies and those of lovers can evoke the memory of mother. About half of the 28 essays in this book, by writers such as Audre Lorde, Joan Nestle, and Dorothy Allison, have been previously published; the other half were written for this anthology. Mab Segrest writes eloquently and sadly about her dead mother's relation to Segrest's writing and anti-racist activism. The excerpt from Holly Hughes's World Without End captures the giddy nervousness of a daughter seeing her mother naked. Shay Youngblood's spare vignette describes the affinity between a mother and daughter whose bodies are breaking. Every Woman I've Ever Loved is an extremely powerful collection, best read slowly with time for weeping.