In this moving memoir, Jean Said Makdisi lovingly chronicles the unsung private histories of three generations of women in the Said family. Set against a backdrop of political upheaval in Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and the United States, the story begins with the author's own experience of raising a family in Beirut during the agonising fratricide of the Lebanese civil war; then it delves deep into the past to uncover her grandmother's early childhood in Ottoman Syria and concludes with her mother's experience of two world wars. Poignant and uplifting, "Teta, Mother and Me" is a powerful testimony to the author's lifelong struggle towards a state of independence and her negotiation of the often conflicting demands of work and family.