Granta 55: Children: Blind Bitter Happiness

Granta 55: Children: Blind Bitter Happiness is a thematic issue of the literary magazine Granta dedicated to the experience of childhood from the perspectives of children, parents and adults who return to their own memories. Instead of a sentimental depiction of childhood, the authors explore its contradictions – love and neglect, protection and violence, attachment and alienation.

The issue opens with Adam Mars-Jones’s autobiographical text Blind Bitter Happiness, in which he explores family heritage and the relationship between parents and children through the life of his mother. Blake Morrison writes about parenthood, illness and responsibility in his essay Doctors and Nurses, while David Mamet considers the psychological consequences of emotional child abuse in Soul Murder.

Leila Berg in Salford, 1924 reconstructs a poor working-class childhood in interwar England, Tony Gould in Blackmore's Tart describes boarding school and the anxiety of adolescence, and Joy Williams and Karen E. Bender depict complex family relationships and the emotional insecurity of children through fiction. Of particular documentary value is Judith Joy Ross's photographic cycleHazleton Public Schools, portraits of American schoolchildren that complement literary texts without the need for commentary.

The common thread in all the contributions is not the question of what children should be like, but how they are shaped by family, school, society, and memory. Like other thematic issues of Granta, the issue combines literature, memoir, reportage, and photography into a whole that remains relevant because of its serious and nuanced approach to the subject of childhood.