This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home

by Margot Kahn (Editor), Kelly McMasters (Editor)

Overview

A thought-provoking collection of personal essays about home

What makes a home? What do equality, safety, and politics have to do with it? And why is it so important to us to feel like we belong? In this collection, 30 women writers explore the theme in personal essays about neighbors, marriage, kids, sentimental objects, homelessness, domestic violence, solitude, immigration, gentrification, geography, and more. Contributors — including Amanda Petrusich, Naomi Jackson, Jane Wong, and Jennifer Finney Boylan — lend a diverse range of voices to this subject that remains at the core of our national conversations. Engaging, insightful, and full of hope, This is the Place will make you laugh, cry, and think hard about home, wherever you may find it.

"This collection, encompassing a spectrum of races, ethnicities, religions, sexualities, political beliefs and classes, could not be timelier . . . open this book, hear its chorus of voices and remember that we are a nation of individuals, bound to each other by our humanity." — The New York Times Book Review
" . . . an honest portrait of the U.S., pieced together like an imperfect American quilt. We need more books like this." — BUST

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580056687
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	11/14/2017
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Margot Kahn is the author of the biography Horses That Buck, winner of the High Plains Book Award; her work has appeared in Tablet, River Teeth, and the Los Angeles Review, among others.

Kelly McMasters is the author of Welcome to Shirley, one of Oprah's top five summer memoirs; her work has appeared in the NYTimes, Paris Review, Tin House, and many others. Both editors hold MFAs from Columbia University.

Editorial Reviews

While it has always been both the birthright and burden of women to not only make and maintain a home but also attend to the physical and emotional needs of its inhabitants—often at some sacrifice to themselves—these far-reaching and compelling essays go beyond time-honored examinations of gender and motherhood…Anthologies suffer when the cast of featured writers is as familiar as the cast of Cats. To their credit, McMasters and Kahn do not trumpet the diverse backgrounds of the authors they are lucky enough to publish—and they might have; the d-word has been tossed around so much it's become threadbare. It is far more powerful to open this book, hear its chorus of voices and remember that we are a nation of individuals, bound to each other by our humanity.

The New York Times Book Review - Elissa Schappell

"The concept of home has certainly evolved beyond a mother haloed in cake flour making home pleasant, as evidenced by the 30 essays in "This Is the Place," edited by Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters. This collection, encompassing a spectrum of races, ethnicities, religions, sexualities, political beliefs and classes, could not be timelier. ...open this book, hear its chorus of voices and remember that we are a nation of individuals, bound to each other by our humanity."—The New York Times Book Review

"If only creating a home were as simple as creating a homepage! This Is the Place beautifully and poignantly explores the many complicated feelings that the concept of home evokes in all of us. A must read for any modern woman, wife, daughter, or mother."-Randi Zuckerberg, best-selling author of Dot Complicated



"An exquisite collection. Whether it be a moving target or a constant, a place of fondness or melancholy, these women look at what we call home, and the roles we have played within it, from every perspective imaginable. This book will inspire you to ponder what your home has been and is-a provocative and worthy pursuit." -Shawn Colvin, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter



"A marvelous collection of original essays that testify to the centrality of home as a place where fantasy and reality collide. Reading the book was like witnessing a series of wrestling matches-the author versus chaos, versus anxiety, versus expectations and finally versus reality. A multi-layered and satisfying anthology of original work."-Thomas Beller, New Yorker contributor and author of J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist

"This Is the Place allows some of America's brightest female writers to explore the often complex and contradictory emotions they have about perhaps the single most emotionally charged word in the English language: home."—New York Journal of Books

"The essays show an honest portrait of the U.S., pieced together like an imperfect American quilt. In reading these stories, and finding the common ground that is shared in our concepts of home, it's easier to see beyond the differences - and to see the bigger picture. We need more books like this."—BUST.com

"Rich, thoughtful"—Toronto Star

"The authors of the pieces in this rich collection reveal fresh approaches to making sense of our culture...Their voices help make sense of where we are going, and also where we stay."—Santa Fe New Mexican

From the Publisher

2017-09-14
A diverse collection of essays that delve into the fraught concept of home as both a physical and emotional space.Editors Kahn (Horses that Buck: The Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith, 2008) and McMasters (Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, 2008) both contribute essays, and the other contributors vary widely in their viewpoints and characteristics, including geographic location, ethnicity, culture, religion, age, and sexuality. Yet common themes and motifs weave throughout the book—e.g., mothers and maternal figures and the significance of landscape, which assumes the starring role in the pieces by Terry Tempest Williams and Pam Houston. For other writers, home failed to offer refuge and became a place of danger or emotional strain, such as Amanda Petrusich's home near the Indian Point nuclear plant. Elsewhere, something as mundane as a garage door opener triggers emotional turmoil for the once-homeless Maya Jewell Zeller. Tara Conklin explores the issues involved in leaving your hometown and never really finding home, while Claudia Castro Luna chronicles her struggle to feel at home in America after leaving El Salvador. McMasters' essay on leaving the city and beginning a new life in a country farmhouse is intense and raw. When a vacation home becomes a permanent residence, she discovered, dreams often shatter: "I thought we would bloom in the country; M. took root, but I withered. I tried growing things, to offset the blood and brutality that seemed to accompany the country life, but I couldn't—I am no farmer." One of the joys of any collection of essays is discovering new writers, and the editors' inclusion of a concise overview of each woman's work should help readers explore further. Other contributors include Leigh Newman, Jennifer Finney Boylan, and Dani Shapiro.A compilation that delights on many levels and will appeal to anyone who has struggled or embraced the idea of home sweet home.

Kirkus Reviews