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The Resource Not for everyday use : a memoir, Elizabeth Nunez

Not for everyday use : a memoir, Elizabeth Nunez

Creator
Summary
  • Tracing the four days from the moment she gets the call that every immigrant fears to the burial of her mother, Elizabeth Nunez tells the haunting story of her lifelong struggle to cope with the consequences of the "sterner stuff" of her parents' ambitions for their children and her mother's seemingly unbreakable conviction that displays of affection are not for everyday use. But Nunez sympathizes with her parents, whose happiness is constrained by the oppressive strictures of colonialism, by the Catholic Church's prohibition of artificial birth control which her mother obeys, terrified by the threat of eternal damnation (her mother gets pregnant fourteen times: nine live births and five miscarriages which almost kill her), and by what Malcolm Gladwell refers to as the "privilege of skin color" in his mother's Caribbean island homeland where "the brown-skinned classes...came to fetishize their lightness." Still, a fierce love holds this family together, and the passionate, though complex, love Nunez's parents have for each other will remind readers of the passion between the aging lovers in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. Written in exquisite prose by a writer the New York Times Book Review calls "a master at pacing and plotting," Not for Everyday Use is a page-turner that readers will find impossible to put down
  • Nunez ponders the cultural, racial, familial, social, and personal experiences that led to what she ultimately understands was a deeply loving union between her parents
Language
eng
Work
Publication
Extent
256 pages
Isbn
9781617752339
Instance
Label
Not for everyday use : a memoir
Title
Not for everyday use
Title remainder
a memoir
Statement of responsibility
Elizabeth Nunez
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
  • Tracing the four days from the moment she gets the call that every immigrant fears to the burial of her mother, Elizabeth Nunez tells the haunting story of her lifelong struggle to cope with the consequences of the "sterner stuff" of her parents' ambitions for their children and her mother's seemingly unbreakable conviction that displays of affection are not for everyday use. But Nunez sympathizes with her parents, whose happiness is constrained by the oppressive strictures of colonialism, by the Catholic Church's prohibition of artificial birth control which her mother obeys, terrified by the threat of eternal damnation (her mother gets pregnant fourteen times: nine live births and five miscarriages which almost kill her), and by what Malcolm Gladwell refers to as the "privilege of skin color" in his mother's Caribbean island homeland where "the brown-skinned classes...came to fetishize their lightness." Still, a fierce love holds this family together, and the passionate, though complex, love Nunez's parents have for each other will remind readers of the passion between the aging lovers in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. Written in exquisite prose by a writer the New York Times Book Review calls "a master at pacing and plotting," Not for Everyday Use is a page-turner that readers will find impossible to put down
  • Nunez ponders the cultural, racial, familial, social, and personal experiences that led to what she ultimately understands was a deeply loving union between her parents
Biography type
individual biography
Cataloging source
YDXCP
http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
Nunez, Elizabeth
Index
no index present
Literary form
non fiction
http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
  • Nunez, Elizabeth
  • Nuñez, Elizabeth
  • African American novelists
  • African American novelists
  • College teachers
  • Immigrants
  • Trinidadian Americans
  • Racism
  • African American novelists
  • College teachers
  • Immigrants
  • Racism
  • Trinidadian Americans
  • United States
Label
Not for everyday use : a memoir, Elizabeth Nunez
Instantiates
Publication
Copyright
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
  • nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
  • txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Control code
858603200
Dimensions
22 cm
Extent
256 pages
Isbn
9781617752339
Lccn
2013956048
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • n
System control number
(OCoLC)858603200
Label
Not for everyday use : a memoir, Elizabeth Nunez
Publication
Copyright
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
  • nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
  • txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Control code
858603200
Dimensions
22 cm
Extent
256 pages
Isbn
9781617752339
Lccn
2013956048
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • n
System control number
(OCoLC)858603200

Subject

Genre

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      44.105245 -70.203443

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