Because I Was Flesh is an authentic record from the inferno of modern city life, and a testament of American experience. Lizzie Dahlberg, separated from a worthless husband, works as a lady barber to keep herself and her son in shabby respectability amid the vice and brutality of Kansas City in the early 1900's. Her constant objective: to acquire a new husband who can give her security and help educate the child. She is attractive to men, but fate never brings her a good one. One suitor makes her put the boy in an orphanage--years of torment that are brilliantly described--and then betrays her. Another does marry her--and disappears with her savings. Lizzie is in despair, but soon begins to laugh at life again and arches her bosom for the next prospect. As he grows through a sensitive, painful adolescence, Edward is both fascinated and appalled by his mother. He adores her but is ashamed of her. He tries to escape, bumming his way to Los Angeles and later going to college in Berkeley, but is always drawn back. Even her death, with which the book ends, cannot release him. Seldom has there been so ruthless, and yes so tender a dissection of the mother-son relationship. And from it Lizzie Dahlberg emerges as one of the unforgettable characters of modern literature.

About the Author
Edward Dahlberg (1900-1977) was born in Boston. He was placed in a Cleveland, Ohio orphanage in 1912 and enlisted in the army during the last days of World War I. He received a degree from Columbia University then became part of the community of expatriate American writers in late-1920s Paris. Later in his career, he devoted considerable time to literary study and criticism, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976.

Reviews
"Dahlberg wed the kill-the-father imperative, the famous anxiety of influence, to the truism that a man is only as big as his enemies." -- Jonathan Lethem - Harper's
"Because I Was Flesh is a work of extraordinary honesty, eloquence and power." -- Alfred Kazin



Book Information
ISBN 9780811200295
Author Edward Dahlberg
Format Paperback
Page Count 234
Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publisher New Directions Publishing Corporation
Weight(grams) 252g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 135mm * 20mm