A Mother Speaks, A Daughter Listens: Journeying Together Through Dementia

This fine book by Felicia Mitchell is . . . in large part about the art of listening, about the complex way memory is born and gathered and protected, a book about honoring people like Audrey whose language has become "alzheimerspeak"-a language that the impatient find unintelligible, but this poet hears as if it were lyric.-Joyce Dyer, author of In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey

Her words are compassionate, but not pitying; sad, but not despairing; familiar, but not flippant. In reflecting on her mother's dementia and death, Mitchell shares with an honesty and insight that . . . can guide us all toward greater understanding and care. -Rev. Joanna Harader, author of Expecting Emmanuel

Felicia Mitchell's bright-shining collection A Mother Speaks, A Daughter Listens . . . . honors not only her mother but the last, trying journey many of us must undertake. In these pages, we are not lost but blessedly found: in story, in clasped hands, in giving voice. It is certain we carry nothing out of this world, wrapped/rapt only in the beckoning light of remembrance. -Linda Parsons, author of Candescent: Poems

I like the scope of Felicia Mitchell's book and admire her talent. It's difficult putting words together that make sense of dementia. It's a problem with language. A Mother Speaks, A Daughter Listens uses poetry to sketch out the space between mother and daughter. It is a lullaby sung from mother to child and back again the other way around. -Richard Spiegel, The Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players, Inc.