Shortly after the deaths of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds on subsequent days, Susan Dominus examined the strained relationship between this mother and daughter in the New York Times: Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, a Mother-Daughter Act for the Ages. Dominus writes:
There is something about celebrity mother-daughter acts like the one lived by Ms. Fisher and Ms. Reynolds that capture the imagination in a way that famous father-sons simply do not.
I’d say we can leave out the words celebrity and famous. Even the most ordinary mother-daughter relationship is archetypal, fraught with push-pull, attract-repel, love-hate, bond-reject, up-down, engage-disengage, support-undermine dynamics.
The HBO documentary Bright Lights, first aired on January 7, 2017, further reveals the intertwining lives of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.
And here are 10 memoirs that focus on the relationship between mothers and their daughters:
Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
Returning to My Mother’s House by Gail Straub
Don’t Call Me Mother by Linda Joy Myers
The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr
Then Again by Diane Keaton
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor
Mother Daughter Me: A Memoir by Katie Hafner
We’ll Always Have Paris: A Mother/Daughter Memoir by Jennifer Coburn
© 2017 by Mary Daniels Brown
