Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo?: And Other Questions I Wish I Never Had to Ask [Paperback]

Jancee Dunn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 23, 2009

Despite her forty years and a successful career as a rock journalist, Jancee Dunn still feels like a teenager, especially around her parents and sisters. Looking around, Dunn realizes that she’s not alone in this regression: Her friends, all with successful jobs, marriages, and families of their own, still feel like kids around their moms and dads, too. That gets Dunn to thinking: Do we ever really grow up?

Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo? explores this phenomenon–through both Dunn’s coming to grips with getting older and her folks’ attempts to turn back the clock. In a series of hilarious and heartwarming essays, Dunn conspires with her sisters to finagle their way into the old family homestead, dissects the whys and wherefores of her parents’ obsession with newspaper clippings, confronts the seamy side of the JC Penney catalogs she paged through as a kid, and accompanies her sixtysomething mother to a New Jersey tattoo parlor, where Mom is giddy to get a raven inked onto her wrist. And Dunn does it all with humor and insight.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dunn's travails will be instantly recognizable to readers in their late 30s and 40s—a generation that's shifted the family bickering about what to serve at holiday dinners to conference calls and e-mails. Her parents are a bottomless well of comedy, sending her wacky newspaper clippings and grilling her loudly about her inability to go to the bathroom during their vacation. Her circle of friends is equally familiar, like the gay buddy who invites her over for TV-movie parties and can always be counted on to make catty remarks about strangers. Several chapters are filled with transcripts of phone conversations with her best friend, Julie, flitting from topic to topic, comparing the embarrassing songs saved on their iPods and wondering why their parents haven't figured out voice mail isn't like an answering machine (Hello? Anybody there? Hello, it's Dad). Dunn's tone is genial, only turning serious briefly near the end when she discusses not having kids—and then inadvertently discovers she's finally pregnant. The seriousness doesn't last long, though, and soon it's back to affectionately mocking her mom's decision to get tattooed—although, as her sisters point out, she's secretly pleased to have something new to write about. (June 23)
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Review

"I want Jancee Dunn to make me a pie. Actually, I want to sit around and listen to her entire family argue about what type of pie. Such is the extreme charm of her world. No matter the subject, Dunn's gimlet eye for all of life’s minor infractions and daily quirks is superbly addictive." —Sloane Crosley, author of I Was Told There'd be Cake

“[Jancee Dunn’s] wonder, bemusement, befuddlement, and frank delight at growing into adulthood are highly entertaining… Readers who enjoy humorous memoirs infused with a healthy dose of pop culture are sure to love this book, which has the potential to be an entertaining and provocative book club choice.” —Library Journal
 
“Genial [and] affectionately mocking…Dunn's travails will be instantly recognizable to readers in their late 30s and 40s…. Her parents are a bottomless well of comedy [and] her circle of friends is equally familiar.”—Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Villard; Original edition (June 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345501926
• ISBN-13: 978-0345501929
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #597,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jancee Dunn grew up in Chatham, New Jersey. She was a writer at Rolling Stone from 1989-2003. She has written for many different publications, among them the New York Times, Vogue, GQ, and O: The Oprah Magazine, where she writes a monthly ethics column entitled "Now What Do I Do?" From 2001-2002 she was an entertainment correspondent for Good Morning America. Prior to that she was a veejay for MTV2 from 1996 until 2001. Her memoir "But Enough About Me," about her life as chronically nervous celebrity interviewer, came out in 2006. Her novel "Don't You Forget About Me" is out in July 2008. She and her husband live in Brooklyn, New York.