A Good Enough Daughter : A Memoir

A daughter's memoir of the expectations she chafed against and the duties she later embraced offers a positive, affirming perspective on this important subject. Reprint.

At twenty, Alix Kates Shulman wrenched herself from her middle-class family and staked a claim to a fierce independence. From her bestselling novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, to her brilliant memoir, Drinking the Rain, she has chronicled what it means to defy the expectations of family and society in order to map one's own life. Now, in this unflinching but tender memoir, she explores what it means to do what is expected of a daughter--discovering in the process the unexpected, complicated joys of going home. Told with the grace, clarity, and insight we have come to expect from her, A Good Enough Daughter is the story of Shulman's difficult journey from dependency to alienation to reconciliation, as she returns home to care for her aging parents in the last years of their lives. The intersection of her own memory with family documents discovered in her parents' house provides the structure for this riveting exploration of her life as a daughter.

At twenty, Alix Kates Shulman wrenched herself from her middle-class family and staked a claim to a fierce independence. In this unflinching but tender memoir, she explores what it means to do what is expected of a daughter - discovering in the process the unexpected, complicated joys of going home.