The Reluctant Daughter

A story every daughter will recognize, The Reluctant Daughter depicts the struggles of Lydia Pinkowitz to communicate the realities of her life as a lesbian, as a feminist scholar, and as the woman she has become to her mother Doris. After years of hoping to attain her mother’s love and acceptance while struggling to live a true and honest life, Lydia eventually acknowledges her mother will never really see her. When Doris develops a life-threatening illness, Lydia is forced to make a life-and-death decision of her own: should she make one final attempt to heal her relationship with her mother or simply let her go?

Leslea Newman has published more than fifty books, including the novels Good Enough to Eat and In Every Laugh a Tear; the short story collections A Letter to Harvey Milk and Girls Will be Girls; the poetry collections Still Life with Buddy and Signs of Love; the middle grade novels, Hachiko Waits and Fat Chance; and the children's books The Boy Who Cried Fabulous, A Fire Engine for Ruthie, The Best Cat in the World, and Heather Has Two Mommies. She has received numerous literary awards including poetry fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Highlights for Children Fiction Writing Award, a Parents' Choice Silver Medal, the James Baldwin Award for Cultural Achievement, and four Pushcart Prize Nominations. Nine of her books have been Lambda Literary Award finalists. Currently, she is the Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts. Leslea's work often addresses lesbian identity and Jewish identity, and how the two intersect and how they collide. Her most recent books include a new volume of poetry entitled Nobody's Mother, and the first board books for children with same sex parents: Mommy, Mama, and Me, and Daddy, Papa, and Me.