Things I Should Have Told My Daughter

By: Pearl Cleage

Narrated by: Pearl Cleage

Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's Summary

In this inspiring memoir, the award-winning playwright and best-selling author of What Looks like Crazy on an Ordinary Day reminisces on the art of juggling marriage, motherhood, and politics while working to become a successful writer.

In addition to being one of the most popular living playwrights in America, Pearl Cleage is a best-selling author with an Oprah Book Club pick and multiple awards to her credit. But there was a time when such stellar success seemed like a dream. In this revelatory and deeply personal work, Cleage takes listeners back to the 1970s and '80s, retracing her struggles to hone her craft amid personal and professional tumult.

Though born and raised in Detroit, it was in Atlanta that Cleage encountered the forces that would most shape her experience. Married to Michael Lomax, now head of the United Negro College Fund, she worked with Maynard Jackson, Atlanta's first African American mayor. Things I Should Have Told My Daughter charts not only the political fights but also the pull she began to feel to focus on her own passions, including writing - a pull that led her away from Lomax as she grappled with ideas of feminism and self-fulfillment. This fascinating memoir follows her journey from a columnist for a local weekly to a playwright and Hollywood scriptwriter, an artist at the crossroads of culture and politics whose circle came to include luminaries like Richard Pryor, Avery Brooks, Phylicia Rashad, Shirley Franklin, and Jesse Jackson. By the time Oprah Winfrey picked What Looks like Crazy on an Ordinary Day as a favorite, Cleage had long since arrived as a writer of renown.

In the tradition of greats like Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, and Nora Ephron, Cleage's self-portrait raises women's confessional writing to the level of great literature.

©2014 Pearl Cleage (P)2014 Blackstone Audiobooks

Intimate and Intriguing

What made the experience of listening to Things I Should Have Told My Daughter the most enjoyable?

Pearl Cleage is authentic and candid. Her story inspires the underachiever.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Pearl is my favorite character.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

wisdom personified.

thanks Pearl. sharing with my daughters. keep the wisdom flowing. God bless the daughters of the work.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

raw, real, bold, poetic. love.

so incredibly delicious to read. and pearl's voice and rendition of her writing is timeless. the text is a masterclass on the in's, out's, and goings on of Black women's experiences with love. The reads on art, activism, feminism, motherhood, family, and sexuality were juicy bits that kept me engaged and pensive throughout. i didn't know how much I truly needed to read this second-coming-of-age memoir.

Unhibited life out there.

Great historical information but a wee too personal. Glad it is over. Great read for women but an outstanding tribute to all who write.

Wonderful!

It was really entertaining in easily one of my most favorite audibles thus far. It's really a great read for anyone familiar with the feminist struggle. :-)

perhaps it is a better read wasn't engaging enough

this book may be better to read than to listen to. It's not very engaging.

I saw myself

Pearl is older than myself but I truly felt that I only had some of these thoughts. Thanks for sharing a piece of you as it solidified I am going to be ok in being myself.