Blood of My Blood

In her posthumously published, fictionalized memoir, Blood of My Blood, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings provides a scathing account of her relationship with her mother, along with the details of her childhood. Rawlings delved just as deeply into the familial relationships of Ellen Glasgow when researching her biography. Contrasting the two writers’ similar feelings of connection and estrangement with their parents and their complex relationships with siblings, it is clear that family experiences compelled them to write, even as those same experiences hindered their writing careers. Even though there is no indication that the two women discussed their parents, their lives indicate a remarkable similarity in overcoming family trials to succeed in writing careers that were considered by some to be unconventional.