Literary Mama Rewind: Mother’s Day

Welcome to Literary Mama Rewind! Every few weeks we’ll round up some of our favorite essays, stories, poems, columns and reviews from the Literary Mama archives relating to a particular theme. In May we celebrate Mother’s Day. But at Literary Mama we celebrate mothers every day of the year. Whether you’re a birth mama, a stepmama, a mother-in-law, a grandmother, an adoptive mama, a mama-to-be or any other kind of mama, we hope you’ll enjoy this collection of readings that reflect on the spirit of motherhood.

• Essential Reading: Mother’s Day by Libby Maxey in Literary Reflections
  Celebrating Mother’s Day at Literary Mama means celebrating all the mothers that literature has to offer—the good, the bad, the relatable, the hard-bitten, the struggling, the comical, the fearful, the mildly crazy, and every other kind, too.

 

• Brief Interludes: Three Poetry Chapbooks on Mothers and Motherhood by Ginny Kaczmarek in Reviews
  Recently, three new chapbooks on the mother-child bond crossed our desks at Literary Mama.

 

• You Have Struck A Rock: Women’s Day in South Africa by Katherine J. Barrett from the Column Mother City Mama
  Women’s Day, August 9, has been a South African public holiday since 1994 but the significance of the date extends back to 1956. On August 9 of that year, 20,000 women marched into Pretoria, to the seat of the oppressive, sometimes violent, pro-apartheid National Party. They stood in silent protest for thirty minutes, many carrying children on their back, and laid petitions of over 100,000 signatures at the Prime Minister’s door.

 

• First Mother’s Day by Rachel Iverson from the Column Mother and Other
  Tangled technicolor cords bleed over my arm. They are fastened to my yellow hospital gown with a crunch of white medical tape. The cords are attached at one end to monitors, IV stands, and a ventilator. The other end is attached to my son. Today is Mother’s Day, 2000.

 

• Step 10: Mother’s Day Leftovers by Anonymous from the Column 12-Step Mama
  It’s the morning after Mother’s Day and here I sit, chin in hands, reeling with an emotional hangover.

 

• Mother’s Day Love Poems by Kara Bachman in Poetry
  1. Mother has eyes that draw me in. Like a fish on a squiggly-wormed line, I cannot escape, do not think of escape.

 

• Mother’s Day at the Blackjack Table by Elizabeth Swados in Poetry
  Every spring I/ Tear myself out by the roots

 

• In My Mother’s Garden by Becky Tipper in Creative Nonfiction
  It has been a year since she died. It’s the strangest thing to have become a mother just as I lost my own mother; only the tiniest sliver of time where I was both mother and mothered.