In our newest columns, Sybil Lockhart (Mama in the Middle) writes about her daughters’ intense connection to one another: [Encouraging their closeness] seemed like a brilliant tactic at the time, but watching Zoë and Cleo now, I wonder what weird dynamic I have created between my children. Zoë depends on Cleo being hers. They seem […]
New in our “Your Commentary” section, editor Dawn Friedman poses the question: What pushes your judgmental button? In her interview with Literary Mama, author Marrit Ingman speaks about the lure of casting a critical eye on other mothers. She says, “It’s hard to reason qualitatively when you are tired and you have an infant, and […]
Every so often, I get an email from a reader asking me what I like to read when I’m not writing. Right now I’m in the midst of reading submissions for It’s a Girl and getting the Literary Mama anthology ready to go, so I’m not doing much reading for pleasure at the moment. But […]
Update: from Ariel Gore’s blog, the coroner reports Allison suffered a fatal seizure caused by Wellbutrin. —— I just wanted to highlight a comment from one of the posts below on Allison Crews. It comes from Alli’s partner, Julie, who writes: [Alli’s] cause of death has not been determined. I am the one responsible for […]
Brooke Shields got it right in her New York Times Op-Ed piece when she wrote: “comments like those made by Tom Cruise are a disservice to mothers everywhere.” Brava to Brooke for taking the high road and using Tom Cruise’s “performance” on Matt Lauer as a platform to raise consciousness about postpartum depression and to […]
Writers tend to be readers. So, here is a good book to put on your nightstand. Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writing of North America edited by Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird (Norton, 1997). I have read many collections of women’s writing throughout my years as a women’s literary historian. I have, however, […]
Sylvia Plath. Anne Sexton. Many other mother writers dead by their own actions. And now Allison Crews. I never knew Allison. But I was impressed with her writing and her activist work. I wrote about how my students responded to her piece When I Was Garbage in a Mothering in the Ivory Tower column here […]
Literary Mama’s own Rebecca Kaminsky interviews Marrit Ingman about her forthcoming memoir, Inconsolable, due out from Seal Press in October. In talking about the book, which explores Ingman’s experience with post-partum depression, they hit upon what’s turned out to be a fruitful topic among mothers: judgement. RK: In the book you talk about the judgment […]
A few years ago, I took the summer “off” to write. That is, I didn’t teach any classes. “Off” for a mother-writer means that you still have all the same child-and-family related duties (or more, as, after all, you aren’t “working”). So there I was, with a couple of months in front of me to […]
Did you know that the first poet published in English in America–male or female–was a mother writer? Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612/13-1672) raised eight children while also writing the poetry that was published in her book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650). Bradstreet wrote on many subjects, including her life as a mother […]
Asha Dornfest reports on the most recent Mother Talk event in Portland: About 35 women filled the house, and the conversation was lively from the get go. This is Portland –- a small town in the guise of a city –- so many of the guests were connected. . . About 45 minutes later everyone […]