
Touchstone/Simon&Schuster, April 2009
Shortly after Alyse Myers's mother dies, Alyse and her sisters are emptying her 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 a 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 her life?
Growing up during the 1960s in a working-class neighborhood in Queens, New York, Alyse's home is not a happy one. Her parents argue constantly and after the death of Alyse's father, her mother at age thirty-three is left with three young girls. While her mother retreats to the kitchen table with her cigarettes and bitterness, determined to stay
there forever, Alyse 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?"
With candor and eloquence, Alyse Myers explores the profound and poignant revelations that so often come to light only after a parent has died. Balancing childhood memories with adult observations, Who
Do You Think You Are? is a heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting portrait of a mother and daughter. No matter what your relationship with your own mother is like, this book will stay with you long after you put it down.
paperback | ISBN: 9781416543053 | Publication Date: April 2009
Reviews:
"Myers provides a moving lesson . . . Her journey has universal
resonance for myriad readers."
--Library Journal (starred).
"Myers conveys a chilling childhood in crisp, candid prose."
--Booklist
"The moving story . . . pleasantly old-fashioned . . . touching,
even tender, record of Meyers's thorny mother's difficult life raising
three girls alone."
--The New York Time
"Here's a book so honest it won't let you off the hook. You may not
realize it during the early pages but it's a book about love. Indeed,
it's a story where love is redefined, and even though it traces the
sometimes unbearable relationship of mother and daughter, there are
insights here for all of us. And -- the writing is masterly: taut,
honest, and strangely satisfying."
--Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize -- winning author of Angela's Ashes,
'Tis, and Teacher Man
"Alyse Myers candidly illuminates how challenging it sometimes is to
love those closest to us, but how necessary it is to love them, if only
so that we may know what love is."
--Esmeralda Santiago, author of When I Was Puerto Rican, Almost
a Woman, and The Turkish Lover
"A compelling read . . . Popular memoirs are peopled now with sadists
and victims, but Alyse Myers has put real people in her story. She's
written a wonderful book. Completely genuine, and yet artfully done."
--Benjamin Cheever, author of Selling Ben Cheever, The
Plagiarist, and Strides: Running Through
History with an Unlikely Athlete
"This is a book about determination and will and ambition, the
laserlike focus of a young girl driven to survive her not- so-nice
Jewish family and grow up to be a different kind of parent. Her success
is gratifying but bittersweet, like that of a lone climber coming back
down the mountain alive. Myers holds back nothing in the retelling of
her story, and we are with, her through the whole of it -- the honesty,
the pain, and the hard-won love waiting for her at the journey's end. I
loved this book."
--Laura Zigman, author of Animal Husbandry and Piece of
Work
"By the end, I felt like I'd been listening to a friend who could not
lie, talking about a life she could not escape, and showing me all the
wisdom she'd gained in the process of making the trip from despair to
peace."
--Roland Merullo, author of The Italian Summer and Golfing
with God
"Alyse Myers's unflinching memoir conveys the wounds of her childhood
with blunt force, tempered by reconciliation. She touches nerves
central to every human life."
--Julie Salamon, author of Hospital, The Net of Dreams,
and The Devil's Candy
"It is still possible to write a good book about an unhappy childhood,
and Alyse Myers has done just that with Who Do You Think You Are? The
unself-conscious simplicity with which Myers tells her tale conceals no
small amount of artfulness."
--Terry Teachout, CommentaryMagazine.com