How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir

In the Prologue to How to Lose Your Mother, Molly Jong-Fast establishes the complex foundation of her relationship with her mother, Erica Jong, the acclaimed author of Fear of Flying. Jong-Fast describes their bond as simultaneously intimate and distant, comparing it to magnets that are inexorably drawn together while maintaining an unbridgeable gap. She presents her mother as someone who claimed to love her desperately yet seemed fundamentally disinterested in her actual presence.

Erica Jong achieved significant literary fame in 1973 with Fear of Flying, a groundbreaking second-wave feminist novel that sold over 20 million copies and earned comparisons to major works of literature. The book’s frank treatment of female sexuality shocked readers and established Jong as a prominent cultural figure who appeared on The Tonight Show and graced magazine covers. However, Jong-Fast emphasizes that her mother never recovered from the eventual loss of this celebrity status, becoming trapped in a cycle of seeking to reclaim her former prominence.

The memoir emerges from a crisis point: Jong-Fast’s mother developed dementia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jong-Fast recounts discovering her mother in increasingly deteriorated states, including finding fecal matter in her bed, which became the decisive moment that forced her to accept responsibility for her parents’ care.