A Lifetime of Struggle; Author Finds Resilience, Art in Mother's Legacy

Summary

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Circling My Mother: A Memoir. by Mary Gordon. Pantheon. 256 pages. $24.

Anna Gagliano Gordon's long life is a litany of sadness, cruelty and betrayal. Born to a Sicilian father and an Irish mother, both immigrants, she was one of nine children. Polio, which she contracted at the age of 3, left her with a shortened left leg and misshapen body. Her sisters were largely monsters, her brothers all but useless. She started working at 17, paid the family's mortgage and sent four of her siblings to college. They repaid her with disdain.

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A Lifetime of Struggle; Author Finds Resilience, Art in Mother's Legacy

She married late and worked for years to support her family as a legal secretary. As we have learned from a previous memoir by Mary Gordon, "The ...

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