An American Childhood, Annie Dillard
An American Childhood, Annie Dillard
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An American Childhood

Author: Annie Dillard

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged: 8 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/17/2011

Synopsis

A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prizewinning author Annie Dillards poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. Dillards luminous prose painlessly captures the pain of growing up in this wonderful evocation of childhood. Her memoir is partly a hymn to Pittsburgh, where orange streetcars ran on Penn Avenue in 1953 when she was eight, and where the Pirates were always in the cellar. Dillards mother, an unstoppable force, had energies too vast for the bridge games and household chores that stymied her. Her father made lowbudget horror movies, loved Dixieland jazz, told endless jokes and sightgags, and took lonesome river trips down to New Orleans to get away. From this slightly odd couple, Dillard acquired her love of nature and taut sensitivity.Publishers Weekly

About Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, The Writing Life, The Living and The Maytrees. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Reviews

Goodreads review by David on September 23, 2014

Already at twenty-three, childhood seems to me a very remote region of my past, and as I was impinged upon with a small pang of nostalgia for youth, I picked up Annie Dillard's An American Childhood - her memoir of her Pittsburgh youth. While there are a number of poignant moments, and elegant turns......more

Goodreads review by William on January 05, 2009

What is it like to "grow up?" How thrilling and disconcerting is it to discover our distinctness from our parents? What do we do with freedom as found in a bicycle? What changes when we discover boys (or girls)? Annie remembers, and helps you remember, too. Some of her memories seem like my own, and......more

Goodreads review by Krista on May 07, 2013

My mother is just a year younger than Annie Dillard, so I kept thinking of her as I read this memoir. Their places in time might have been the same, but their circumstances could not have been more different: While Dillard was raised with privilege in the big industrial city of Pittsburgh, complete......more

Goodreads review by Holli on January 19, 2009

I chose this one for the Book Discussion group because I was looking for a memoir and I remembered really liking this when I read it 21 years ago on the eve of Gabe's birth. I liked it just as much the second time around and reading it again now, on the eve of Gabe's transition into adulthood, made......more

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