Tag: Mothers and Daughters

  • Short Story Review: “My Balenciaga” by Han Ong

    (The short story “My Balenciaga” by Han Ong appeared in the March 23rd, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Harold Julian for The New Yorker

    I love the use of McGuffins as a plot device in storytelling. It gives instant motivation, and when used well, can give valued insight into a character’s constitution as they seek the MacGuffin. (In case you aren’t aware what a MacGuffin is, think of the Maltese Falcon, Ark of the Covenant or the Death Star plans.)  I would argue that the Balenciaga dress in Han Ong’s “My Balenciaga” is the same plot device, but used in a dramatic, rather that thriller/action, setting.

    The Balenciaga dress is owned by Lucy’s mother, who is a former fashion model from the Philippians. The mother received the dress many years ago while she was working as an international model, and confusingly, the dress does not contain a Balenciaga label in it, making its authenticity suspect. Lucy and her mother live with Lucy’s aunt on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and the three lead a pleasant life in the City. The mother still continues to wear the dress on special occasion out, such as going to the Met to watch an opera. After the death of Nora Aunor, a Philippine actress, which affect Lucy’s mother personally, things begin to change in their home. For Lucy, she changes her appearance and tries on the dress, which fits her well, and soon her personal and professional life begin to develop in positive ways. Yet there is still a question over the dress’ origination.

    This is a story that hits all of its marks; it is a very competent work. Yet, I never felt like anything was at stake for these characters, such as there was no emotional peril for Lucy or her mother. I believe that Han Ong was trying to create tension with the dress by playing with the idea of “The Value of Myth.” (You know, like in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” or “Lisa the Iconoclast”) What is more important; the truth about the myth, or the truth the myth creates? No matter which side of this question is answered, I felt that the characters would essentially stay the same. Hence, no tension or peril.

    Perhaps the story was a little too long, spending more time telling rather than showing, so to speak. And, unfortunately, I think you could have taken the aunt out of the story, and it wouldn’t have changed anything. But, I did enjoy the character of Lucy, and found her journey in the story compelling; the search for connection with her mother. Which is why I see the Balenciaga dress as this story’s MacGuffin.

  • Short Story Review: “Predictions and Presentiments” by Valeria Luiselli

    (The short story “Predictions and Presentiments” by Valeria Luiselli appeared in the February 16th & 23rd, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Jesús Cisneros

    “Predictions and Presentiments” by Valeria Luiselli is a short story that gave me a reassuring hug. The reassuring didn’t come in the form of any answers to the questions which the story brought up, but it reassured me that life is about growth and discovery.

    Overly Simplistic Synopsis: After a divorce, a mother and her daughter spend time in Sicily, not too far from where the mother’s grandmother is originally from. And they try to cook a swordfish head, too.

    In the story, the main character has a small mosaic fragment of the god Proteus which her grandmother obtained/stole from an archaeological dig she was working at. The mosaic fragment is a clever dramatic device in the story. But I had this thought in my head that “Predictions and Presentiments” was a bit like Proteus; it kept shifting and changing. Was this a story about just the narrator, a mother, and her daughter? Was it about her grandmother as well? Legacy trauma? Family origin story? Connection to the past, or the ancient past? What truths do we share with our families, or do we make fictions out of those truths? Can we change who we are, or we destined to our nature? Is our future but a guess, or is there a way to logically know what’s coming?

    This is a story that walks a very nice tightrope of keeping it all together. I couldn’t shake the feeling that at any moment the mother and daughter could spin off into ruin. I can’t say where in the story I got that from; perhaps it was the refrain of starting over in a new place, the perils that come with beginning again, and discovering something new? Maybe it was the climax of the story, or the fishmonger who sold the fish head? Or it could have been how not everything that happened in this piece got wrapped up neatly, or fully explained? This created a feeling of fragmentation, that Proteus mosaic again, but Luiselli held it all together. See, it reassured me that life is messy, not neat, but wonderful to experience.

  • My Place in the Chain

    Boy, did I get yelled at by my daughter this morning, and I didn’t deserve it, but I let her do it. She was angry, not at me, but she did take it out on me. I thought it best to let her express her frustration at having to go to school on a Monday morning.

    She is just now beginning to experience emotions that are much stronger than she can grasp or fully express. I need to pick my battles, clearly, but more importantly, I need to make sure she is given space to figure out what it is that she is feeling.

    Somewhere, way up in the Either of the next plane of existence, my Mother is laughing her ass off right now. Because I fully deserve this. I deserve to get berated by my kid, because I was that kid not too long ago and did this to my mother. And I am sure that she did this to her mother, and so the chain – this cycle – continues on.

    It is humbling, reassuring, and somehow also disconnecting, knowing that everything that I emotionally experience, my child will experience, and that my parents also experienced. That my emotional individuality is kind’a a sham. I’m not original; I’m just like my parents, who were just like their parents, and so on and so on.