WE ARE SOLD OUT—Available at all neighborhood & online bookstores, however.
FATAL FLOWERS
On Sin,Sex, and Suicide in the Deep South
Rosemary Daniell | Author
- $15.95 paperback
- 320 pages with 11 photographs
- 1-892514-26-5
- Memoir | Women's Studies
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Winner of the 1999 Palimpsest Prize
“Daniell gives strength to the rest of us.”—Dorothy Allision
the book
"I guess you could say it saved my life," says author Rosemary Daniell of the force that compelled her to write Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex, and Suicide in the Deep South, a tell-all memoir of growing up female in the South. "When I started writing the book, I was in a great deal of emotional pain. My parents' lives seemed uselessly tragic, because of my mother's depression and my father's drinking. When my mother died, it became almost an emergency act for me to write the book."
The cathartic, deeply personal result of Daniell's desire to cope with her mother Melissa's suicide at the age of 60, Fatal Flowers became an instant classic, a roadmap for Southern women in the communal quest to confront and explode the stereotypes that have long repressed and silenced them. Since its original publication two decades ago, the book's supporting audience has steadily increased. Its taboo-shattering descriptions of sexual awakening and self-fulfillment resonate across generations, representing an everywoman's account of the struggle for female identity in a South still often dominated by male superiority and rigid sexual mores. Last fall, Hill Street Press selected Fatal Flowers as the winner of its first Palimpsest Prize (an award for favorite out-of-print book) and reprinted the classic with a new afterword by the author.
In Fatal Flowers, Daniell recounts growing up in a family that, on the surface, was a model of virtue and social decorum: two young, attractive parents from good families who strove for an upwardly mobile existence, two daughters who dressed neatly and attended Sunday School each week, an extended family always eager to contribute advice on child-rearing. There was, however, an underside to that immaculate portrait: Daniell's father was an alcoholic; and her mother, a budding writer who denied her talent at a young age due to a lack of self-confidence, suffered chronic depression and struggled to meet the unrealistic obligations required of a perfect housewife. After their mother's death, Rosemary and her sister Anne discovered that she had burned all of her original writings, in a final denial of her worth as a creative, thoughtful being.
Daniell herself waivered between wanting to be a "good girl," one whose sole purpose was to serve God and husband, and wanting the independent, self-possessed life that would allow her to fulfill her own creative, personal, and sexual desires. She would endure the wreckage of two marriages, a number of affairs, and several dead-end jobs before coming to terms with the fact that she was-and is-a writer and a strong Southern woman. Today an accomplished author, poet, and feminist, Rosemary Daniell shares her wisdom through Zona Rosa, the writers' groups for women that she leads nationally. "I tell them to write about their most personal feelings," she says. "If they can have the courage to break through and write about things that are difficult for them, then their writing improves overnight." Daniell knows that writing is truly a lifeline, a way to heal inner wounds, celebrate one's own existence, and connect with other women in the journey toward strength and self-understanding.
the author
Rosemary Daniell is an acclaimed poet, novelist, and memoirist. She is the founder of Zona Rosa, a series of creative writing workshops she leads in Savannah, Atlanta, and cities and locales throughout the world. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants and is the author of Fatal Flowers, Sleeping with Soldiers: In Search of the Macho Man, A Sexual Tour of the Deep South: Poems, The Hurricane Season, and The Woman Who Spilled Words All Over Herself: Living and Writing the Zona Rosa Way.
the praise
"Every girl-child should be handed a copy of Fatal Flowers at puberty. No one else has ever explained better the ideology of the ëbelle' with more grace, wit, and needle-sharp insight. In telling her story, Daniell gives strength to the rest of us."—Dorothy Allision
"No one surpasses Daniell in defining that irresistible and turbulent phenomenon, of which she is the very soul, southern womanhood."—John Berendt
"A wonderful book—full of honesty and courage."—Alice Walker
"There is no more honest writer in America."—Pat Conroy
"Fatal Flowers
"Fatal Flowers reads like the story of a latter-day Scarlett O'Hara, told by Baudelaire."—Philadelphia Inquirer
"Daniell is one of the women by whom our age will be known in times to
"One of the most important nonfiction books ever published out of the South."—Newsday
"One of the South's best and bravest writers."—Anne Rivers Siddons
also of interest: Confessions of a (Female) Chauvinist
also of interest: Zona Rosa creative writing workshops