Harriet Brown's new book is Shadow Daughter: A Memoir of Estrangement.From her Q&A with Caroline Leavitt:
What was the moment when you felt haunted into writing this memoir?--Marshal Zeringue
On some level I’ve been waiting to write this book for years. Long before my mother died, even before our final estrangement, I knew I wanted to write about our relationship and about the larger issue of family estrangement—for myself, for the catharsis I hoped it would bring, and for other people who might be going through similar experiences and who felt alone with those feelings and problems.
Do you feel that you personally changed in the writing?
One thing that changed for me in writing this was that I had to—chose to—articulate to myself and on the page some of the inchoate thoughts and feelings that had been swirling around in my head for my whole life. Another thing was that I got to connect with so many other people who had struggled or were struggling with estrangement, and that was intensely instructional and liberating.
Did anything surprise you in the writing?
What surprised me most, and continues to surprise me, is just how...[read on]