An American Daughter [Hardcover]

Wendy Wasserstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 16, 1998

Lyssa Dent Hughes is the privileged, well-educated daughter of a Republican senator. She is the wife of a professor and the owner of a lovely house in Georgetown. She is also the president's nominee for Surgeon General. When the media discovers that once, long ago, she failed to respond for jury duty, this relatively minor misstep is portrayed as a serious moral lapse. A good friend uses the incident to make a point, scarcely thinking of the implications, and Lyssa must suffer the consequences. From that moment on, Lyssa Dent Hughes sits helplessly as the press investigates her family and friends, shattering her privacy, her career, and her world. Wendy Wasserstein's trenchant humor and sizzling dialogue combine with biting political commentary to produce a masterful, and topical, drama.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This brave and ambitious play portrays with withering accuracy the damage wrought by the tart-tongued TV culture of Washington.-Walter Shapiro, USA Today

A daring new play-beautiful, brilliant, angry and funny. Wendy Wasserstein has not merely returned to the broader political concerns of her cherished Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heidi Chronicles, she has returned with a vengeance-electrifyingly reconnected. . . . Enormously moving.-Newsday

About the Author

Wendy Wasserstein is the author of many plays, including The Heidi Chronicles, for which she received a Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. She has also been the recipient of the New York Drama Critics Circle Prize, the Drama Desk Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award. She lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (April 16, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151003327
• ISBN-13: 978-0151003327
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,318,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "They tear you apart because they are jealous or disappointed. Or worse--just because they have nothing better to do.", November 25, 2008

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: An American Daughter (Paperback)

When Lyssa Dent Hughes, a widely respected physician, is nominated for United States Surgeon General, it looks as if she is a shoo-in to be confirmed. Fifth generation granddaughter of Ulysses S. Grant, daughter of a conservative Indiana senator, wife of a respected Georgetown professor, and tireless pioneer for women's health issues, Lyssa is looking forward to her opportunity to make a difference on a larger scale. During a casual conversation in the presence of a reporter, however, a "friend" remarks that she once failed to appear for jury duty.

The press pounces on this "Jurygate" mistake, which quickly becomes worse when she indicates that she does not make "icebox cake" and "pimiento-cheese canapés" like her late mother and the other women from Indiana, galvanizing them to oppose her "elitism." The press camps out at her Georgetown home, and before long, her young son is yelling from the TV room, "Mom, they think that you're the problem with America." But Lyssa refuses to "be hung out to dry, even if I have to wear headbands, bake cookies, and sing lullabies to do it." In an interview with Timber Tucker, which becomes the climax of the play, she aggressively tackles the health and social issues which mean so much to her, and angrily faces down the press and the public's perceptions, for better or worse.

Written in 1999, this play tackles women's social issues in a man's world, serious women's health issues, political expediencies, and press intrusions into private areas, and every female reader or viewer will understand and empathize with the characters as they face their demons here. In the ten years since this play was written, however, the country has made great strides, and the issues Lyssa discusses have been analyzed and tackled with far greater energy than ever before, to the point that Lyssa's impassioned speech seems a bit dated. Hilary Clinton's "baking cookies" remarks and Lyssa's parallel icebox cake and pimiento-cheese references feel tired and "stale" now.

The facts and figures she cites regarding research funds for breast, ovarian, and uterine cancer, as opposed to the far greater funding for prostate cancer, are being actively addressed, and points made about the holding of women to different standards now feel like a cliché. As a relic of the 1990s, this play is important and, perhaps, even ground-breaking, but its punch has been blunted over the past ten years by the progress women have made since it premiered. The fact that it still resonates with viewers, however, shows that significant issues still remain. n Mary Whipple

The Sisters Rosensweig
The Heidi Chronicles.
Bachelor Girls
Old Money
Charlie Rose with Wendy Wasserstein, John Guare & David Henry Hwang; Caio Fonseca, Edmund White & Isabel Fonseca; Morris Lapidus (November 23, 2000)

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An American (Ritual) Character Assassination, November 22, 2004

By 

Aco - See all my reviews

This review is from: An American Daughter (Paperback)

Of the Wasserstein I've read, Heidi and Rosensweig, this one read the smoothest.
It was an engrossing story, certainly recognizable in this day in age, peppered with characters that I've seen time and again on cable news, and pivots on that seemingly minor transgression everyone famous and political seems(has) to have made.
What stands out about An American Daughter is the weakness in the media system to award courage and conviction in action. Even in spite of mistakes, which are surely universal. That I suppose was behind Wasserstein's m.o., that tangling with the gossips and character assassins and the news engine is more gristle for them, death for you. That is a statement painfully necessary more and more, as the hypocrisy of the day is not slips of paper and frustrating civil service, but war and death and political capital.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An American Daughter, June 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: An American Daughter (Library Edition Audio CDs) (Audio CD)

Amazingly relevant to present days. Beautifully acted and written.