Parenting & Families

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Independence Day by Richard Ford, the sequel to his acclaimed novel, The Sports Writer, about a troubled divorcé.

Filmmaker Deborah Hoffmann kept a video diary of her mother's battle with Alzheimer's diseases. That footage became the basis for her documentary "Complaint of a Dutiful Daughter." It airs on the POV show on PBS.

Movie Critic, Stephen Schiff reviews "Bridges of Madison County," starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Distinguished Guest by Sue Miller. It's about the resentments of an adult child toward his parents.

Allende has published her first work of non-fiction, Paula. It's about her 28 year old daughter, who fell into an irreversible coma. Paula began as a letter to her dying daughter and turned into an autobiographical work about Allende's childhood in Chile, her exile in Venezuela and her move to San Francisco.

Kenyon died Saturday of leukemia. She and her husband, poet Donald Hall, had both been struggling with cancer for years. Many of their works were inspired by their battles with the disease. Their last book of poems, entitled Constance, is about Hall's surgery and recovery. We replay our 1993 interview with the couple.

Writer Scott Peck and his father Colonel Fred Peck. The younger Peck has written his first book, All American Boy, a memoir of his life growing up in an abusive home with his step-father and the rebuilding of his relationship with his father after a fourteen year estrangement. Peck was thrust on the national scene in May 1993 when his Marine Colonel father spoke against gays in the military to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Col. Peck went on to say his oldest son, Scott, was gay, and though he loved him, he should not be able to serve in the military.

Producer/ Director Terry Zwigoff recently released a new documentary "Crumb." The film was shot over seven years and follows the life of Robert Crumb, the famous underground artist who popularized character's such as Mr. Natural, Flakey Foont and Keep on Truckin'. The film won the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary and cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival.

Writer Jan L. Waldron was 17 when she gave her baby daughter, Simone, up for adoption. Waldron's own mother was adopted, and in turn left her children when Waldron was eleven. In Giving Away Simone: A Memoir, Waldron tells of the parting and then meeting again with her eleven-year-old daughter, now renamed Rebecca. Rebecca is the fifth generation of women in the family to be abandoned by their mothers; in reuniting with her, Waldron is determined to break that cycle of leaving.

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews the new film starring Jessica Lange. He says its focus on message over narrative makes it a poor fit for the big screen, better suited for network TV.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new CBS series "Under One Roof," starring James Earl Jones and Joe Morton. It's notable for being the first television drama focusing on an African American family.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg reflects on his five-year-old daughter's developing literary tastes.

Lee has written two volumes of poetry, Rose and The City in Which I Love You. He's won many awards for his work, including the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He's just completed a memoir about his family's refugee experience in America, The Winged Seed. Lee was born in Indonesia; his parents were from China, where his father had been private physician to Mao. After escaping Southeast Asia, the family ended up in a small town in Pennsylvania, where his father headed an all-white Presbyterian church.

TV critic David Bianculli previews tonight's episode of "Mad About You," which features a guest appearance by Carl Reiner as Alan Brady -- the character he played on "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Poet Mark Halliday reads "Separated Father," a poem about the differences between familial and romantic love.

Golden in the author of the new memoir, "Saving Our Sons." She writes about bringing up her son in Washington D.C., where homicide is the leading cause of death for Black males between 18 and 24. In the preface, she says, "I stopped work on a novel in order to write this book. The unremitting press of young lives at risk, the numbing stubbornness of annual, real-life death tolls, rendered fiction suddenly unintriguing, vaguely obscene."

Johnson was a member of The Johnson Family, which sang gospel and country music for two decades. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a fan; the group was invited to sing at his memorial service. Johnson went solo in the late-1950s, and was a regular on Don McNeill's "Breakfast Club" and Jack Paar's TV show. After making a dozen records, she left show business to raise a family and earn a degree in drama at Dartmouth. She has since returned to her singing career, with a cabaret act at The Oak Room. Her new album is called "A Family Affair."

Chong is the author of "The Concubine's Children." It's a history of her family, beginning with her grandmother, May-Ying, a concubine brought to Canada by Chong's wealthy grandfather. May-Ying had two daughters in China, and Chong's mother in Canada -- three sisters who hadn't met until Chong persuaded her mother to take the trip to China when she was writing this book. "Publisher's Weekly" says "this superbly told saga of family loyalties and disaffections reads...like a novel."

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "The Paperboy," a new novel about from Pete Dexter. She says its sole flaw is the lack of complex women characters.

Film critic Stephen Schiff has a review of Little Women, the latest of many adaptations of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel.