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All of us at Literary Mama are deeply saddened to learn of the death of columnist Ericka Lutz’s husband Bill Sonnenschein. Ericka's editor, Maria Scala, has written a memorial note.
Columns
01.04.09 | Mama at the Movies listens to her three year-old shout against war.
Essays
01.04.09 | In From Laundry to Literature, Cassie Stocks writes, "It's the lack of clean laundry, the dishes in the sink, the absence of whole grain snacks, and the toilet training struggles that one must venture far away from, to another place, to a place where one can write. How then to get from here to there? How to dedicate yourself to a perfect sentence when you are surrounded by examples of things that are so far from the ideal, things that the world deems less than perfect in value?"
Feeling inspired? Check out the related writing prompt.
Blog
Literary Mama editors chime in on upcoming events, literary news, and other happenings around the maternal blogosphere.
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Creative Nonfiction
12.28.08 | In Born of the Dragon, Sandra Miller writes, "I wanted to touch it the way mothers with grown children often ache to hold babies. A purple peace sign inked like a badge of hope on that tender spot between pelvis and belly, a place where passion easily ignites. The woman, who I hardly knew, lifted her tee-shirt higher, offering me a better view. My hand reached out, then pulled back. "Sure, touch it," she invited. And as I drew my forefinger across the compelling flatness, I knew that I would have one."
And in Lice Season, by Andrea Jarrell, she writes, "The lice bring us together, my daughter and me. When I see the translucent eggs, I know I am a bad mother. "Lice season," says the school nurse. My daughter's hair, dark brown, shows them well. Holding each strand in the sunlight to examine, I take some enjoyment from touching her head, touching her again. Lately, she does not want me in the old "mother" way."
Finally, in Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser's Searching for the Sweet, she writes, "Last week, a couple of hours before berry picking, we heard about a baby born in Florida the day before, a biracial girl whose birth mother did not want to raise her. The birth mother, living with the father of her five year-old-son, had kept this pregnancy hidden because this girl's birth father was a different, unnamed man. Unwilling to see or hold the baby, she did not even want to know the baby's gender. At first, the situation sounded simple: come get the baby tomorrow. Take her home. No visitations, no entanglements: the birth mother wanted no contact."
Now Reading
12.28.08 | Each month, we look in our bags and on our nightstands to let you know what we're reading right now. One gift that all mothers would appreciate this month is spare time. So, we asked Literary Mamas: If given the gift of time, what book would you choose to enjoy in your spare time?
Take a look at our picks; you may want to add some of these titles to your reading list, too. Then, spread the joy! Download the list and bring it to your favorite mama-friendly bookstore or library.
Profiles
12.28.08 | A Conversation with Lori Tharps. In pursuit of a life-long interest in Spain, author Lori Tharps spent her college junior-year abroad in Salamanca where she encountered troubling attitudes toward her Blackness that ranged from nasty to fetishizing. Despite this less-than-warm welcome, Tharps stuck it out in Spain. While searching for her "real" self, she also found her future husband, a Spaniard, as well as the inspiration for her latest book, Kinky Gazpacho. Interview by Deesha Philyaw.
Essential Reading
12.13.08 | In December, the amount of free time to read diminishes or completely disappears. This month, Literary Mamas compile the Essential Short Story collection. Find one here to satisfy your need for a compelling quick read!
Share the love! Download the list to find it fast at your favorite mama-friendly bookstore or library.
Fiction
12.13.08 | Sarah Hilary writes in The Swimming Pool and the Sea of the complicated, deep exasperation in loving a toddler: "Sometimes in the night my daughter wakes and lifts her head and smiles at me through the bars of her cot. A hazy, golden, unguarded smile. I crouch down, craning my neck to catch its warmth, the way a cat will track a patch of sunlight across a carpet, basking."
And Kathy Fish writes of trying to reach a son with autism in Spin: "The woman picked up the car and placed it in line with the others, but the boy kept screaming. She hadn't placed it perfectly. She thought of gluing them together, but the teacher wouldn't approve. She tried again and, finally, she got it right and the boy stopped screaming. The woman let out a long breath."
Poetry
12.14.08 | December's poems are about gifts: Rachel Bunting's Reading SkippyJon Jones at Bedtime Is Suddenly Not Enough: "emptying my hands of his book bag, his lunch box, his small sticky grip." In Some Villanelles Go Nowhere, Carolyn Harris Zukowski writes: "I'm tired of the games we have to play." And in Heather Derr-Smith's At the End of the Day she writes: "unaware of the lost bird, / its efforts at reorienting."
Reviews
10.19.08 |
In her review of Meredith O'Brien's A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum, Heather Hudson looks at the difficult art of writing well about the madness that is mothering small children: "Ignore the universality of a situation and the stories become self-indulgent and better suited to the family scrapbook. Go too deep and you risk alienating readers who are simply looking for a little escape and camaraderie over a cup of coffee. There is a fine balance."
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