Born to a Red-Headed Woman (last stock)

Discover the poignant journey of Kay McKenzie Cooke in 'Born to a Red-Headed Woman'. This unique poetic memoir, published by Otago University Press, weaves together music and memory through over 50 evocative song titles that span four vibrant decades. As you delve into these 72 pages, you'll be transported from the author's rural Southland girlhood of the 1950s to the complexities of teenage motherhood in the 1970s, and into her current role as a grandmother, mother, wife, and author. This paperback edition, measuring 148 x 210 mm, explores universal themes of family, loss, and the everyday rituals that bind us together. Cooke's laconic and wry narrative style offers a subtle yet profound take on life's challenges and joys. With its plain-spoken honesty and gentle humor, this autobiography is both a testament to human resilience and an exploration of how music can evoke powerful emotions and memories. Perfect for readers seeking memoirs that resonate with life's simple yet profound experiences, 'Born to a Red-Headed Woman' captures the essence of familial love and reflections on what it means to live an authentic life. Don't miss your chance to own one of the last available copies of this insightful work.

Author: Kay McKenzie Cooke Publisher: Otago University Press
Bind: paperback
Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm
Pages: 72
Publication Date: 28-04-2014

Using the extraordinary capacity of music to revive the places and people from our pasts, this poetic memoir springs from over 50 song titles of song lines and spans more than four decades.
Laconic, wry, subtly philosophical, Kay McKenzie Cooke's new collection carries us from her rural Southland girlhood in the 1950s and 60s to the bitter pressures of adopting out her baby as a teenager in the 1970s, and to her present as grandmother, mother, wife and author.
A plain-spoken honesty, a sensitivity tot he natural world, a gentle humour, a deep sense of how the richness of our relationships lodges in ordinary rituals and routines: all combine in a quietly moving autobiography.
"Born to a Red-Headed Woman" is documentary, vivid, ever grounded in the workaday detail of farming, the changing decades, family, city life and job. Yet at times the language peels right back to the tender nerve of major, formative losses.
If Cooke's observations of the daily are the simple melodic lines that seem to coast on the surface, beneath that runs a rich bass line of meditation on time, on meaning, how to live a life true to oneself, and to familial love.