A Book Report on Motherland by Fern Schumer Chapman

For the Summer Reading Club I read Motherland by Fern Schumer Chapman




The book Motherland has a subtitle – Beyond the Holocaust: A Daughter’s Journey to Reclaim the Past. As this narrative unfolds, the story of Fern Schumer Chapman on a trip to Germany with her mother, the reader realizes the word daughter in the subtitle refers not to the narrator but to her mother. Chapman’s mother was a very young girl when her parents arranged for her to escape from Nazi Germany to Chicago, and only in 1990 did she return. In this book Chapman first sees a photo that shows her resemblance to her grandmother – it is also Chapman’s visit – but it is clearly her mother’s story.



In the prologue Chapman writes, “No one escapes the grip of a homeland, the first ground etched in childhood and memory.” The story begins as the pair fly to Germany, throughout the flight and throughout the story the mother’s long ago family in Germany are remembered. The closeness of the airliner is outlined with clear imagery, also the town in Germany where they meet classmates from Chapman’s mother’s school and find their way to a close friend.



The book has lines from a poem by Maxine Kumin at the front – about Russian Dolls inside one another:



…May we, borne onward by our daughters,

Ride in the Envelope of Almost-Infinity,

That chain letter good for the next twenty-five

Thousand days of their lives.