Mother's Day: Song of a Sad Mother

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"Mother ruled over life and death. Over life and death of my dolls. They're only dolls. They're not living things. And if they were. You mustn't rely on others. When I came home on my first day of school, they were gone. There was a smell of burning in the house. You don t need them any more. I took away the ashes."

Maria-Maria had broken away from her domineering mother long before her physical death, or at least she thought she had. Neither mother s cruel lashings nor her cutting criticism had prevented her from rejecting the values and ideals that her authoritarian and Communist party-line-towing parents held so dearly. To their crushing dismay, she would not deploy her artistic talents toward embodying the Ceaucescian model of the new human. Quite the contrary, she was going to revel in being imperfect, and embark on a journey of self-exploration in order to discover what it means to be a self that is not defined by being her mother s daughter or a mother to her own daughter. Putting everything at stake to detach from the primal bond that both oppresses and eludes her, Maria-Maria opens herself up to, and achieves, the unexpected.

Banciu explores an uncompromising struggle for selfhood in a singular voice that is vulnerable and authentic, emotional, and unsparingly honest. Beyond a literary study of the complex dynamics that inextricably bind and repel mothers and daughters, Banciu s Mother s Day Song of a Sad Mother is a courageous reflection on what it means to become and accept one s self with all of the renunciations and rewards that this fraught journey entails. Elena Mancini

"Maria-Maria revisits her experiences. The experiences from her previous life. From a distance. From a different perspective. Lifts herself up with them. Accepts them. Falls in love with them."

This edition was translated from the German by Zoe-Annamaria Hawkins, and edited by Catharine J. Nicely. IT contains an afterword by Elena Mancini and illustrations by Meda Gheorghiu-Banciu.