A Mother's World: Journeys of the Heart (Travelers' Tales Guides) (Paperback)

~ Marybeth Bond (Editor), Pamela Michael (Editor) "My daughter comes from a long line of people with strong homing instincts..." (more)
Key Phrases: magic side, insulin reaction, New York, Pamela Michael, Mother Teresa (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Of the advantages of traveling as women, the editors write, "We can go to almost any country in the world and look another woman in the eye and not be intimidated or intimidating." The universality of mothers, being them and having them, is a bond that domesticates the farthest reaches of the planet. The 30 essays by women travelers collected here bear witness that, unlike many of their male counterparts, even the most adventurous women never outrun the ties that both bind and sustain them. It is only incidentally a book that tells you how to travel with infants or aging relatives, but one that recounts the emotional rewards available to those who do.

Reportage of the internal landscape is at least as much the point here as capturing the smells or the qualities of light in a foreign land. The best of these pieces--such as Tricia Pearsall's "Altitude Adjustment," which is about a mother's solo wilderness camping in preparation for the emptying of her nest, or Wendy Dutton's "The Places I Went When My Mother Was Dying"--make the metaphors of movement through geography and of movement on the birth-death axis mutually reflective in a genuinely moving way. The quality of writing and clarity of vision vary considerably among the 30 writers represented here. Some pieces barely transcend the What I Did Last Summer genre, or fall prey to maternal sentimentality. Still, a book that collects the testimony of observant women on the move is a cause for celebration, not least because it should enfranchise and inspire more.

From Publishers Weekly

This latest addition to Bond and Michael's Traveler's Tales series is a collection of 30 essays, some previously published and others original. Varying in interest and competence, each piece recounts the experience of traveling with a child or a parent. With the exception of Colin Bear, who writes about visiting his adoptive mother's relatives in Alaska ("Mama Bear"), all the authors are women. Some of the journeys, like Joyce Wilson's trip to Egypt with her mother ("Christmas in Cairo"), are to faraway locales, while other selections describe neighborhood jaunts, such as New Yorker Christine Loomis's account of a day spent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with her three-year-old daughter. The essays collectively touch upon a variety of topics. Louise Erdrich, in an excerpt from her The Blue Jay's Dance, marvels at how a bird's nest makes her aware of the need to let her children go. Cherilyn Parsons ("Mother to the World") details her feelings while nursing very ill children at Mother Teresa's Calcutta orphanage. Altogether, this combination of traveling and caretaking is a moving reminder of the nature of love's bonds.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Travelers' Tales (January 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885211260
• ISBN-13: 978-1885211262
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,976,824 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars in more ways than one, October 28, 2003

By	Rebecca Brown "rebeccasreads" (Clallam Bay, WA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Each essay reaches out & touches the Reader because of the struggles encountered whether succumbing to blindness or traveling too often for work or searching for ancestors or...it is so unfair that I can't comment on every mother's story...& there are a couple of sons' in there too!

Mother love is a vintage brew regenerated with each woman, each child. It is steeped in our species' unwritten story & spiced with unbridled adoration & everyday epiphanies. To be a mother, regardless of biology or birth, is to accept an ancient mantle of compassion, responsibility & transformation. To mothers our children are gods incarnate, showing us the world anew, & to travel with them, because of them, for them, is indeed an enlightening journey.

Rebeccasreads highly recommends A MOTHER'S WORLD, for the Reader will find something wonderful, heartbreaking, infuriating, inspiring, hilarious & everso genuine in this celebration, to be reread many times.