“Dur­ing one of the tex­ting ses­sions that became our habit over the period I now think of as both late and early in our rela­tion­ship, my mother revealed the exis­tence of some­one named Janis Jerome.”

^{_{So begins Michelle Orange’s extra­or­di­nary inquiry into the mean­ing of mater­nal legacy—in her own fam­ily and across a cen­tury of seis­mic change. Jerome, she learns, is one of her mother’s many alter egos: the name used in a case study, even­tu­ally sold to the Har­vard Busi­ness Review, about her mother’s midlife choice to leave her hus­band and chil­dren to pur­sue career oppor­tu­ni­ties in a big­ger city. A flash­point in the lives of both mother and daugh­ter, the deci­sion forms the heart of a broader explo­ration of the impact of fem­i­nism on what Adri­enne Rich called “the great unwrit­ten story”: that of the mother-daughter bond.}}

^{_{The death of Orange’s mater­nal grand­mother at nearly ninety-six and the fear that her mother’s more “suc­cess­ful” life will not be as long bring new urgency to her ques­tions about the woman whose absence and anger helped shape her life. Through a blend of mem­oir, social his­tory, and cul­tural crit­i­cism, Pure Flame pur­sues a chain of per­sonal, intel­lec­tual, and col­lec­tive inher­i­tance, trac­ing the forces that helped trans­form the world and what a woman might expect from it. Told with warmth and rigor, Orange’s account of her mother’s life and their rela­tion­ship is pres­sur­ized in crit­i­cal and unex­pected ways, result­ing in an essen­tial, rev­e­la­tory med­i­ta­tion on becom­ing, self­hood, free­dom, mor­tal­ity, sto­ry­telling, and what it means to be a mother’s daugh­ter now.}}

^{New York Times Edi­tors’ Choice Pick}

Wal­rus mag­a­zine Best Book of 2021

^{“Rich and mov­ing … Orange skirts the traps of the mother-daughter mem­oir by going beyond per­sonal his­tory. She inter­leaves mem­o­ries of her mother and mater­nal grand­mother with dis­cus­sions of writ­ing by Simone de Beau­voir, Adri­enne Rich and Susan Son­tag, among oth­ers. Their thoughts on moth­er­hood and fem­i­nism don’t per­fectly align, nor do they match the views of Orange’s own mother, who climbed the cor­po­rate lad­der and agi­tated for equal pay but who never con­sid­ered her­self a fem­i­nist. This is a good thing: Dif­fer­ent voices and per­spec­tives are allowed to coex­ist, thus under­cut­ting any uni­ver­sal truths about women and moth­er­hood … After my first read­ing, cer­tain scenes haunted me for a week … Pure Flame may be Orange’s legacy. It is already her gift.” —Mag­gie Doherty, The New York Times}

^{“Through­out the book, her mother’s voice emerges with strik­ing clar­ity, proud and gen­er­ous, ardently mer­i­to­cratic, puz­zled by her daugh­ter, and some­times hurt by the dis­tance that has grown between them. It is Orange’s pre­cisely ren­dered rec­ol­lec­tions that move and star­tle the most.”  —Michael Prior, The Wal­rus}

“Some­times achingly sad, but often warm and evoca­tive, this reck­on­ing between moth­ers and daugh­ters is a bril­liant work of fem­i­nist cri­tique.” –Lau­ren Puckett-Pope, Elle

“Michelle Orange goes there with a cool head and an open heart, and the result is a mes­mer­iz­ingly com­pelling mem­oir and cru­cial con­tri­bu­tion to untan­gling the most overly prob­lema­tized rela­tion­ship in human his­tory.” –Fly­ing Books, Toronto

“Powerful…a vision of two women…fighting to dis­cover the small spaces where their ideas of wom­an­hood might still be mutu­ally intel­li­gi­ble. “ –Veron­ica Espos­ito, Lithub 

“Orange embarked on this fiercely intel­li­gent memoir–which dou­bles as a cri­tique of fem­i­nism and mater­nal failure–to try to come to terms with her mother’s deci­sions and their decades-long estrange­ment.” –The Globe and Mail 

“The pris­matic effect of Orange’s mul­ti­di­men­sional approach is bril­liant, illu­mi­na­tive, and mov­ing.” —Kirkus (starred review)

_{“In a weave of mem­oir, his­tory, and reflec­tion, Orange judi­ciously con­sid­ers the lives of her mother and her mother’s mother within the larger con­text of women’s ongo­ing bat­tles for equal­ity and lib­er­a­tion … In gleam­ing prose of ten­sile strength, Orange con­sid­ers the painful para­doxes of women’s lives and mother-daughter rela­tion­ships, draw­ing on the writ­ings of Simone de Beau­voir, Susan Son­tag, and Adri­enne Rich, while track­ing her seem­ingly indomitable mother’s long-brewing lung dis­ease and her ulti­mate bat­tle between mind and body.” —Book­list}

In Pure Flame, Michelle Orange geniusly rewrites and rein­vig­o­rates what Adri­enne Rich called “the great unwrit­ten story.” In doing so, she recasts the notion of mater­nal legacy and fills it with pointed mys­tery and informed sin­cer­ity. Pure Flame is a tuto­r­ial in bend­ing cre­ative non­fic­tion.  –Kiese Lay­mon, author of Heavy: An Amer­i­can Memoir

The best book I’ve read this year, Pure Flame is both a plea­sure to read and a work of high seri­ous­ness. A med­i­ta­tion on moth­ers and daugh­ters and an unspar­ing, styl­ishly writ­ten, and pro­foundly lov­ing explo­ration of her own rela­tion­ship with her mother, the book is as orig­i­nal as it is pow­er­ful. To be with Orange as she reck­ons with each stage of her mother’s life and with her own shift­ing assess­ments is to expe­ri­ence a joy that is at once intel­lec­tual and moral: this is a book that expands and breaks your heart, not with sen­ti­men­tal­ity but with its intel­li­gence and com­pas­sion. –Adelle Wald­man, author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

There’s an irre­sistible ques­tion at the cen­ter of this book: In her attempt to avoid becom­ing her mother, did Michelle Orange lose her­self, and her mother too? The book changes as it goes around cor­ners: a mys­tery novel, an inquiry, a call-and-response poem–Pure Flame is a provoca­tive, med­i­ta­tive, funny, fem­i­nist adven­ture about two women try­ing to tell each other the sto­ries that mat­ter while there’s still time.” –Alexan­der Chee, How to Write an Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Novel

Open­ing Pure Flame is like step­ping into a cathe­dral. Michelle Orange makes elab­o­rate leaps of asso­ci­a­tion and ele­gant sen­tences seem effort­less to con­struct, but only a writer as skilled as Orange can make a reader feel like a col­lab­o­ra­tor, rather than a mere wit­ness to the artistry. Pure Flame is as lyri­cal and idea-driven as it is propul­sive and mov­ing. I already can’t wait to reread it. –Jean­nie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl