MY MOTHERýS MAIDEN NAME
Growing up in the Loop
by
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About the Book
"Any resemblance to actual persons is obvious and intentional." "So Roslynd Singer begins her warm and humorous paean to the loved ones of her childhood, people like "Uncle Sarah" and "Muvvie Jean."" She goes on to tell about her choice of title, saying "My Mother's Maiden Name has become a kind of buzzword in our family, and several other families as well." And so it has. Whenever an out-of-town member of the family returns to St. Louis and meets a young woman whose face may be slightly familiar but not her name, the question "what was your mother's maiden name?" brings the past generation into focus and determines the degree of closeness to which the parties are entitled. The book is a delightful and meaningful description of what it was like to be a young Jewish girl growing up in a neighborhood of several religions, apartments close enough to share cooking smells and snores, and a street car line that turned around only a block away in the "Loop." The story has resonance and meaning for those who are left in the author's generation and for all the young who followed.
About the Author
Roslynd M. Singer, the author of this book, died in 1993. The manuscript was kept in her effects but never published. It came to light once more upon the death of her son, James, the last then surviving member of her immediate family. Mrs. Singer grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, attended Washington University in St. Louis, graduating with a degree in Social Work. She was an accomplished psychotherapist, mother, and wife, who spent most of her adult life in Los Angeles, CA. She carefully sought out facts about her early years in University City, Missouri, the location of the book narrative. In it she describes the joy and tribulations of growing up there in the 1920? and 1930?s, with an emphasis on the women in her childhood and early adulthood. The book depicts this period with accuracy, humor, and pathos and tells of a time and place mostly gone from view in this early part of the 21st century.