A wonderful tribute to the woman who allowed Marie to "follow her dreams, both personal and professional and survive the hardest of times of her life." This would be her mother, Olive Osmond. Marie called upon what she learned from her mother for raising her own 8 children. This memoir has you crying when she describes how she found out her son committed suicide and what lead up to it. This memoir has you laughing when she talks of her mother's inbility to eat food when they traveled to other countries. Great stories of life on the road and being the only girl with 8 brothers.

In her fiction, Jeanette Winterson creates prose that reads like poetry--yet her language, spare as it is, still creates a web of stories so dense that the reader becomes tangled up in the plot until finally putting the book down (and for me, these stories have stayed with me long after I finished reading them).  

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? takes its title from cruel words thrown at Winterson by the mother whose powerful force is felt in her novels (most notably Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit).  Fortunately Winterson made the choice to be happy rather than to live a life of repression and bitterness.  Her memoir shoes some of the hard choices she makes.  

Several incidents in this book actually left me incapable of even imagining the pain Winterson must have experienced, and one episode in particular made me cry too hard to keep reading, but in its broader narrative trajectory, this is a book about how beautiful it is to be a human being--and how much love we can find when we break down the bonds that restrain and harm us.  

This was a quick & amusing read. Some chapters were pretty funny, but the ending was weak (as was the AM/satellite metaphor). I like reading about how the famous became famous. Maybe McCarthy has too many memoirs out for each to be substantive enough? Funny stuff without being as raunchy or offensive as you might expect (much funnier than Chelsea Handler's stuff). 

I absolutely loved this book!

Elizabeth Keckly was born into slavery, and gave birth to a beloved son (George) by her white master.  She worked hard and saved money to buy freedom for them both by using her exceptional skills as a seamstress.  She becomes dressmaker to Mrs. Davis, whose husband will leave Washington to lead the Confederacy during the Civil War.  With her connections, Mrs. Davis recommends Elizabeth to her many prosperous friends, and her place as the dressmaker to Washington socialites was a given.  When Lincoln became president, his wife soon learned of the reputation of Elizabeth and wanted her to become her dressmaker.  Although not an easy person to work for, Elizabeth and the First Lady become very close friends, and remain so for many years.  The book sheds light on some of the behind-the-scenes action at the Lincoln White House, and touches on Mary Todd Lincoln's reputed acid tongue, mental instability, and spendthrift ways. 

George, who is very light skinned, volunteers to fight in the Civil War, enlisting as a white man.  His mother is dismayed at her only son going off to war, but she must keep her feelings to herself as he would be brought up on many federal charges that could lead to a death penalty, had she "outed" him as the son of an African American woman.  She suffers in silence.

If you love history, and especial Presidential history, you will enjoy this book.  I was quite saddened when it ended.  It's well written, well researched, and one of my favorites!

It is interesting to note that Elizabeth Keckly penned her own memoir called Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. 

I intend to read that book too.