Blog post 7_lab girl

dedication to her mother

Hope Jahren dedicates the book to her mother; "everything that I write is dedicated to my mother." Throughout the book, her mother is mentioned occasionally in negative connotations. Although Lab Girl is dedicated to her mother, she narrates the book like her mother was part of her life, which had shaped her so much in negative way. She is open about how the relationship with her mother impacted upon her future life. "I vaguely sensed that there was something we weren't doing, some hint affectionate that normal moths and daughters naturally do, but I couldn't figure out what it was, and I suppose she couldn't either" (pg10). This indicates the struggles and how she was shaped in her childhood. Furthermore, I feel like the bipolar disorder and the struggles in her motherhood resulted from the lack of affection in her childhood.
Now that she became a mother, Jahren dedicates the book to her mother in a way to show the missing affection in the childhood for her mother. Jahren’s mother was a student of English literature and her nurtured love of reading set second roots in Jahren’s career; this was significant part of her career as she got her interest, a first set of roots, in field of science in her father’s lab then to the second set of the roots in literature which was her mother's passion.