In this week's podcast we investigate the mushrooming genre of parental memoir - a form that spans books films and poetry and for which one of our guests has invented the new categories "patremoir" and "matremoir".
Novelist and poet Bernardine Evaristo investigates Maya Angelou's various versions of her mother through seven memoirs spannning more than half a century, and culminating in her latest book, Mom & Me & Mom. Andre Gerard, editor of an anthology of father essays and poems, explains why he felt the word "patremoir" was necessary, and traces the tradition back to its origins in the early years of the 20th century.
Emma Brockes joins us to tell the extraordinary story of her mother, who buried a traumatic early life in South Africa behind the persona of an English housewife from the Home Counties. Only after her death did her daughter begin to uncover the horrors she had survived...
Reading list:
She Left Me the Gun by Emma Brockes (Faber)
Fathers: A Literary Anthology, edited by Andre Gerard (Patremoir Press)
Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou (Virago)
Lara by Bernardine Evaristo (Bloodaxe)
