Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. In this first volume of her two-volume memoir, prize-winning poet Sharon Doubiago writes an extraordinary memoir of growing up in the 1940s and 50s in South Central Los Angeles and the desert mountain town of Ramona. MY FATHER'S LOVE addresses the current controversies of memory and memoir and sets new standards for the genre by adhering to historical records, letters, diaries, interviews, and a drive to know the unfabricated truth, while weaving these, in stunning language and imagery with remembering and reliving. This book attempts to understand her family rooted deep in the history of America, in both its Southern aristocracy and its victims. It looks at the world through the eyes of a child who knows what love is, a girl labeled beautiful, a victim of rape, incest and psychological terrorism, depicting the genesis of an American epic poet. It will change your perspective of the world forever.
Author City: SAN FRANCISCO, CA USA
Sharon Doubiago's memoir, MY FATHER'S LOVE, VOLUME I: PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS A YOUNG GIRL (Wild Ocean Press, 2009), was a finalist in the Northern California Book Awards in Creative Nonfiction, 2010. Love on the Streets: Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008) received the Glenna Luschei Distinguished Poet Award and was a finalist in the Paterson New Jersey Poetry Prize. She has written two dozen books of poetry and prose, most notably the epic poem HARD COUNTRY (West End Press, 1999), the book-length poem South America Mi Hija (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), which was nominated twice for the National Book Award, and the story collections EL NIÑO (Lost Roads Press, 1989) and The Book of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (Graywolf Press, 1988), which was selected to the Oregon Culture Heritage list: Literary Oregon, 100 Books, 1800-2000. She holds three Pushcart Prizes for poetry and fiction and the Oregon Book Award for Poetry for Psyche Drives the Coast and a California Arts Council Award. She's an online mentor in Creative Writing for the University of Minnesota (Split Rock) and a board member of PEN/Oakland. For two decades she has been writing Son, a memoir about the mother-son relationship, for which she has received two Oregon Institute of Literary Art Fellowships. Her new collection of memoir stories, Why She Loved Him, is circulating. She has published over a hundred essay—from the personal and creative, to the scholarly.
Reviews and Other Links
author site
Claire Burrows at Feminist Review
Antoinette Nora Claypoole/Gently Read Literature
Dottie Payne in Rain Taxi