Reviews

What can we learn from the characters and authors of literature about being mothers in the world?

Charman’s ideas culminate over the course of the book to build the case that motherhood is a political state, an identity with a societal focus and agency. 

Reddy layers the history of social science research on mothering along with her personal experience like a nonfiction lasagna that I devoured before I even realized how hungry I was for a smart, vulnerable book-length narrative about how and why our culture sets up exacting, impossible expectations for mothers.

A raw and fascinating examination of how disability influences parenting, the novel is also surprisingly funny at times, interweaving traditional Jewish rituals through the lives of Yahm’s nonconforming, irreverent characters

On the darkest night of the year, Stephanie Duncan Smith was grieving a pregnancy loss. It was the winter solstice and opening weekend for the new Star Wars movie. Cramping…

A pastiche of urban and rural, traditional and modern, religious and secular, the contemporary world of oil companies and businesswomen set alongside village and collective farm life.

Reading Yiyun Li sometimes feels like a curse, as if her spirit could seep through the words into me and my child.

This narrator’s days are fragmented by the needs of her children and the customers at the diner where she works.

Gleason offers readers a textured story of episodic and chronic migraines: the ebb and flow of pain triggers, detached medical evaluations and diagnoses, and the matrilineal disposition toward migraines.

Like a quilt, in which scattered pieces of fabric are used to create a new whole, Kiefer stitches together scenes from a diminished former mill town in Maine with her grief for her recently deceased mother and her struggles with motherhood, career, and midlife.

This novel walks readers through the pain of loss and the darkness of depression.