In this extraordinary collection of original letters written especially for this volume, more than seventy-five distinguished daughters, including Joyce Carol Oates, Barbara Kingsolver, Ntozake Shange, and Hilma Wolitzer, speak to their mothers, both living and deceased, with messages that come straight from the heart....

Here are novelists, poets, essayists, humorists, cartoonists, journalists, many of them mothers and grandmothers themselves, authors of different ages and cultures, each writing in her own distinctive voice, reaching into the most personal part of her life to share her secret sorrows, joys, hurt, anger, and understanding in I've Always Meant to Tell You. "What do I tell her? What do I not tell her?

What do I wish I had said?" Their letters hold thoughtful, provocative, funny, and sometimes painful revelations - memories and confessions, poems, fables and tales - at once personal and universal, touching and profound.