Grandmother – Michigan Quarterly Review

Grandmother

Sentimental Value, Pt. 2

Leave a Comment /

As I’ve written before, my grandmother’s apartment holds a particular place in my head. I keep revisiting the floor plan, and the room that glows brightest in my memory is the kitchen. The kitchen, I think, is the quintessential center for grandmothers, mothers, and female authority in general. And while my grandmother was not maternal, not soft, rarely kind, she haunts the kitchen, vapors of past dinners clinging to her permed hair and her stained apron.

Sentimental Value, Pt. 2 Read More »

As I’ve written before, my grandmother’s apartment holds a particular place in my head. I keep revisiting the floor plan, and the room that glows brightest in my memory is the kitchen. The kitchen, I think, is the quintessential center for grandmothers, mothers, and female authority in general. And while my grandmother was not maternal, not soft, rarely kind, she haunts the kitchen, vapors of past dinners clinging to her permed hair and her stained apron.

Sentimental Value

Leave a Comment /

* Lillian Li *

After my grandmother died, my mother was given all of her possessions. There was a lifetime of sentimental trinkets, of furniture that had never gone a day without its dust-protecting plastic jacket, and of strange redundancies. My grandmother left her with four refrigerators, three televisions, and twelve swatches of fox fur. My mother complained to a friend that she had no idea what to give up, what to throw away, what to burn. There was no talk of keeping.

Sentimental Value Read More »

* Lillian Li *

After my grandmother died, my mother was given all of her possessions. There was a lifetime of sentimental trinkets, of furniture that had never gone a day without its dust-protecting plastic jacket, and of strange redundancies. My grandmother left her with four refrigerators, three televisions, and twelve swatches of fox fur. My mother complained to a friend that she had no idea what to give up, what to throw away, what to burn. There was no talk of keeping.

lsa logoum logoU-M Privacy StatementAccessibility at U-M