Reading

Well, it’s been a banner week in my life. First, Darla Shine‘s Happy Housewives appeared on my doorstep. My favorite line so far is “Our mothers have no idea how they have burdened us with liberation and equality.” Liberation. Equality. Yep, that’s a real drag. Then, I learned here and here that Caitlin Flanagan’s new […]

One of the more provocative responses to yesterday’s post, “The ‘Elite’ Talk Back” was by the original article’s author Linda Hirshman. When I saw the comment initially, I steeled myself for criticism. Instead, my points were ignored (dismissal perhaps being the ultimate form of criticism) and Hirshman instead wrote an oddly personal response to The […]

In Homeward Bound, published in The American Prospect, Linda Hirshman makes the argument that, among America’s “elite” women, feminism has, essentially, failed. Her proof — “Half of the wealthiest, most-privileged, best-educated females in the country stay home with their babies rather than work in the market economy.” She sets out to prove that, while the […]

The National Post (a Canadian national daily) had an article in last weekend’s paper by Anne Kingston (who is one of the few Post writers who does not make my teeth itch) entitled The latest motherhood advice is not about raising children, and subtitled The only acceptable stay-at-home moms are yummy. Seeing the word motherhood […]

I’m nervous to be blogging here. Not to be blogging — I write unabashedly over on my personal blog MUBAR (Mothered Up Beyond All Recognition). But to be blogging here. At Literary Mama. It’s a bit scary for me. Because there is a new group of readers — ones who might find my fast and […]

LiteraryMama contributor Ona Gritz has a new chapbook of poems available! Ona has shared the truth about mothering her son with Literary Mama readers in poems such as The Impatient Mother and Shared Custody. Now she turns her honest eye to explore the experience of loss and daughterhood. In Left Standing, a chapbook from Finishing […]

Barbara Crooker, a mother-poet and former Literary Mama contributor, has a new book out. Barbara Crooker, a mother-poet and former Literary Mama contributor, has a new book out. Radiance won the Word Press First Book Award and is now available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore. (ISBN 1932339914) Take a sneak peak […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]