Who She Was: My Search for My Mother's Life

by Samuel G. Freedman

Who She Was brings a compassionate yet unflinching eye to the American Jewish experience. Researched as a history, written like a novel, Who She Was stands in the tradition of such classics as Call It Sleep and The Assistant. In bringing to life his mother, Samuel G. Freedman has given all readers a memorable heroine.

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Samuel G. Freedman is a columnist for The New York Times and a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of seven acclaimed books, most recently "Breaking The Line," and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Reviews

[Joanne Bamberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the most well-written and powerful memoirs I have read in a long time. The author "reconstructed" his mother's life -- she died when he was a young man and he knew little about "who she was." To learn more about her, he was able to interview many people about her and put the pieces back together about the life she had before she was a mother. Truly amazing.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely detested this book after the introduction. I felt that the author (appropriately enough, the son writing his mother's biography), was a wangsty and annoying narrator, wrapped up in his own headspace.

Luckily for me, since this book was for the NextBook group I belong to and therefore required reading, the actual biography that follows this insipid introduction was fantastic. The author is a journalist who uses his extensive research skills to truly craft a narrative out of his mother's life- there is some conjecture, but the vast majority of the material is lifted from primary sources (letters, photos, etc) and from interviews with his mother's family, friends, and the apocryphal stories of their own children.

A few highlights for me were the initial ambivalence of the mother and her family towards WWII, until the atrocities against Jews were finally made known. The author's grandmother, essentially the evil mother character in the narrative, is from Bialystok and goes from endless hope to final despair, when she is unable to bring her favorite sister to the US from Poland and inevitably dies in the Holocaust. In addition to a quite different view of the Holocaust (from the perspective of a vaguely progressive and idealistic teen), we also see the beginnings of Burndy. My own father worked for Burndy in New Hampshire and occasionally in their home office in Connecticut, so I found those brief passages in the book a surprising peek into my own past.

In general, I did not expect to enjoy this book and slogged through the first fifty pages. At that point it went from laborious chore to fascinating read, and I highly recommend it! Admittedly, I was reading it from the perspective of a Jewish book group, but I would also suggest it for anyone interested in journalistic biography drawn from sources, as opposed to simple and embellished conjecture.

[Aisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

After I read a short bio piece in an in-flight magazine written by Freedman, I wanted to learn more about his family history. His writing is seamless and evocative. He reveals personal details and emotions that do not necessarily paint the most flattering of portraits, but in the end you come away with a picture of the whole person. His mother Eleanor died of cancer at 50. Growing up, her parents never achieved financial security; as a teenager during World War Two she performed well at a technical position normally held by a man. She was a star in her progressive, New York high school, where all subjects seemed to come easily to her. She struggled in college, however, and never realized a fulfilling career. The author believes that this shortcoming haunted her through her marriage and the raising of her three children in suburban New Jersey, where she and her husband enjoyed a comfortable existence.

My main quibble with the biography is the number of lists the author includes as he tries to paint a vivid picture of the times his mother grew up in: The Depression, the War, post-War America. It feels a little forced and plodding. I found a NYT book review of the bio online and found it to be terribly unfair towards his mother. The reviewer dismissed Eleanor as someone who simply "peaked in high school." Freedman's portrait is much more complex than this. His mother is depicted as a flawed human being who was in many ways a victim of circumstance. To dismiss a complicated, loving, intelligent person as a mere stereotype is facile.

[J J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid and admirably condensed example of a non-fiction book that pays a very personal tribute to a life while evading the "memoir" category with concrete historical context afforded by a journalistic level of research.

I couldn't help thinking how I'm just like anyone else when it comes to human nature - the most readable and riveting parts of this book for me were the stories of love.

I was also struck by the sharing of a level of guilt bordering on self-loathing that I thought had been original to me and my loss of a parent. Funny how now I am the one who wishes I could tell the author this platitude: "You really shouldn't be so hard on yourself, Mr. Freedman."

But I know that this is easier said than done, and I respect that a well balanced book came out of that struggle to know someone after their death.

Sincerely,
Jia

[Rn Haven · Rating 2 out of 5]

New York Times journalist's memoir researches and reconstructs his mother's life during the Depression and WWII, through her untimely death from cancer when the author is a Freshman in college in the early 1970s. Gives great insight into what it was like to actually live in NYC during those times and for a young woman to come of age as the nation was on the brink of war when her relatives in Eastern Europe were being exterminated. Add another star if your mom, grandmother or aunt is around the age of the author's mother. Describes how a generation of women were promised much and frustrated by the post-war pressure to be housewives.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book would make an interesting book discussion title. There is a lot to think about: the shifting realities of the past as the author searches to understand his dead mother and how she went from the most likely to succeed in her high school class to an ordinary housewife tortured by regrets. Is the son's understanding of her life really a true picture of her life, or is it a distortion created by a son, angry and grieving from the early loss of his mother?

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's attempt to reconstruct his mother's life was interesting and well written. But ultimately it's not clear that Freedman really managed to understand his mother any better than he did when he set out to write the book. He was looking for a lesson in her life and his awkward attempt to paste one on at the end seems inappropriate and unfair to his mother.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do we really know who our parent was? This book written by Samuel G. Freedman is one of the most interesting books I have read. Partly because it makes me reflect on my parents whom I really knew mostly by them being my parents. How well can we know a mother or father? Each parent certainly is a mystery. Relatives and old friendships have a different intimacy than a parent/child bond.

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was more a biography than a memoir. Adequate but not outstanding.