Writing Resources
The Whore’s Child by Richard Russo is the story of a 90 year old nun told through a college Advanced Fiction workshop taught by the narrator The nun Sister Ursula writes a memoir of her childhood growing up at the mercy of nuns who would never forget her title as a whore s child Ursula s mother was a prostitute and her father did not have a job So they sent her to a Belgian convent school to receive a proper education At the convent she is treated very poorly and constantly ridiculed for her parent s circumstances After Ursula s mother dies and her father disappears from her life she starts the process of becoming a nun at the convent Ursula eventually becomes a nun and lives her life at the service of God and her fellow sisters During the college writing workshop Ursula writes the story of her childhood Towards the end of the course there is a workshop to talk about Ursula s memoir and one student brings up the idea that Ursula s father was her mother s pimp She struggles with this thought but in the end Ursula realizes that her classmate could be right leaving her to truly be the whore s child The Whore s Child by Richard Russo shows that in order to allow oneself to let down a wall you have to be willing to hear the words you do not want to hear in the case of Sister Ursula this truth is that her nickname the whore s child is true I found it extremely clever for Russo to give Ursula and the book the same title
