Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Gerber
					, reviewed by Nancy

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        281 
Book Reviews
[stanza break]
To burst the pod…
Moon-women, …
We sprinkle that knowing-dust
Into our daughter’s eyes.
And men? They are “that thrashing,” a mere staccato lunge into fecundity 
and then no longer central to the heritage of women.
Lying to Our Mothers
Katherine Lawrence.  
Regina:  Coteau Books, 2006.
Reviewed by Nancy Gerber
Katherine Lawrence’s collection of poetry, Lying to Our Mothers, is the po-
etic equivalent of a bildungsroman, the novel that explores personal growth. 
Memorable and moving, these poems map the speaker’s journey from girlhood 
to womanhood.  With its emphasis on images and memory rather than plot 
and sequential time, poetry is a genre especially suited to representing the 
complexities and contradictions of maternal subjectivity, allowing readers to 
witness the speaker’s transformation from daughter to mother and from being 
her mother’s daughter to becoming her daughter’s mother.
The poems are divided into four sections.  The first, “You Knew – Didn’t 
You?”, explores the emotional geography of female coming-of-age in the 
1960s: the desire for freedom and adventure, the value and vicissitudes of 
girls’ friendships, the pain of mother-daughter conflict.  In “Mud Wars,” the 
tension between a strong-willed mother and an equally strong-willed daughter 
is announced: “Our first house / a battlefield / because the address told us so: 
61 Battlefield Drive, / the ravine across the road / site of all our wars: mother 
versus a small muddy daughter” (3).  The speaker brings her feminist perspec-
tive to bear in acknowledging her mother’s domestic entrapment: “How could 
we stop ourselves? / You tied at the waist / to stove and sink.  Me, fixed on 
spring’s wild / riot beyond the door” (3).  
The second section, “The Soft Give of Flesh,” includes an eponymous 
poem where a mother meditates on the impossibility of protecting a teenage 
daughter from violence: “She is immunized against pertussis / tuberculosis, 
282        Volume 10, Number 2
Book Reviews
chicken pox / not rape” (33).  The speaker describes the dark moment that 
connects the two women: “Bedsheets soaked in cold sweat / girl screaming help 
with no voice … eyes black / pool of crimson blood / between my legs, her legs” 
(34).  Later the speaker recalls her own experience of violation: “I was cornered 
in a parking lot / his thick hands, my back pushed against brick“ (39).
The third section, “Letters Home,” is an alphabet acrostic (sometimes 
called an abcdarium) in which each letter of the alphabet begins a new stanza 
of the poem.  The letters mirror the daughter’s journey: they take flight as 
the daughter leaves, carrying the mother’s hopes, wishes, and fears for the 
daughter’s well-being into the world and back home.  The mother mourns 
her daughter’s departure even as she understands its purpose and necessity in 
establishing female autonomy: “ Once upon a time / you would have liked 
me, / a time before I was your mother / a time when I was a girl / who wanted 
to leave home” (59).
The fourth and final section, “Slipping the Blindfold,” examines a grown 
woman’s life, with poems on marriage, illness, friendships, sexual desire, and 
domestic arrangements: “Sharon’s lost interest in cooking and sex / so you’d 
think Jim would lose interest in Sharon / but turns out she married a resource-
ful man / who now goes to market on Saturdays” (71).  The first poem in this 
section, “Fabric,” describes the generational continuity that binds mothers 
and daughters even as daughters ceaselessly create new patterns: “We are the 
daughters of thread-and-needle mothers / women who stitched their lives 
from a pattern … cut” (67).
Lawrence, a development officer for the Royal University Hospital 
Foundation, is the author of a previous collection of poetry, Ring Finger, Left 
Hand, which won the First Book Award at the Saskatchewan Book Awards. 
Her new book is a valuable addition to the literature on mother-daughter 
relationships, women’s friendships, and complex relationships that resonate 
in women’s lives.
    
Embracing Brings You Back
Pat Clifford. 
Regina: Coteau Books, 2006.
Reviewed by Dorsía Smith Silva
Embracing Brings You Back is a collection of poetry that describes the journey 
of ovarian cancer survivor Pat Clifford. The poems could easily have become 
maudlin and sentimental, but Clifford’s work resonates with powerful images 
and poignant lines. Here, the poet braves the possibility of her death and la-
ments the loss of women who succumb to ovarian cancer.


English

Lying to Our Mothers

Silva
					, reviewed by Dorsía
					 Smith

282        Volume 10, Number 2
Book Reviews
chicken pox / not rape” (33).  The speaker describes the dark moment that 
connects the two women: “Bedsheets soaked in cold sweat / girl screaming help 
with no voice … eyes black / pool of crimson blood / between my legs, her legs” 
(34).  Later the speaker recalls her own experience of violation: “I was cornered 
in a parking lot / his thick hands, my back pushed against brick“ (39).
The third section, “Letters Home,” is an alphabet acrostic (sometimes 
called an abcdarium) in which each letter of the alphabet begins a new stanza 
of the poem.  The letters mirror the daughter’s journey: they take flight as 
the daughter leaves, carrying the mother’s hopes, wishes, and fears for the 
daughter’s well-being into the world and back home.  The mother mourns 
her daughter’s departure even as she understands its purpose and necessity in 
establishing female autonomy: “ Once upon a time / you would have liked 
me, / a time before I was your mother / a time when I was a girl / who wanted 
to leave home” (59).
The fourth and final section, “Slipping the Blindfold,” examines a grown 
woman’s life, with poems on marriage, illness, friendships, sexual desire, and 
domestic arrangements: “Sharon’s lost interest in cooking and sex / so you’d 
think Jim would lose interest in Sharon / but turns out she married a resource-
ful man / who now goes to market on Saturdays” (71).  The first poem in this 
section, “Fabric,” describes the generational continuity that binds mothers 
and daughters even as daughters ceaselessly create new patterns: “We are the 
daughters of thread-and-needle mothers / women who stitched their lives 
from a pattern … cut” (67).
Lawrence, a development officer for the Royal University Hospital 
Foundation, is the author of a previous collection of poetry, Ring Finger, Left 
Hand, which won the First Book Award at the Saskatchewan Book Awards. 
Her new book is a valuable addition to the literature on mother-daughter 
relationships, women’s friendships, and complex relationships that resonate 
in women’s lives.
    
Embracing Brings You Back
Pat Clifford. 
Regina: Coteau Books, 2006.
Reviewed by Dorsía Smith Silva
Embracing Brings You Back is a collection of poetry that describes the journey 
of ovarian cancer survivor Pat Clifford. The poems could easily have become 
maudlin and sentimental, but Clifford’s work resonates with powerful images 
and poignant lines. Here, the poet braves the possibility of her death and la-
ments the loss of women who succumb to ovarian cancer.
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        283 
Book Reviews
The five-section, thirty-six poem collection describes a range of experi-
ences as Clifford endures the various stages of ovarian cancer. The first sec-
tion recollects Clifford’s initial diagnosis and her numerous treatments. She 
undergoes rounds of testing and learns the complex medical terms for body 
parts in “Bilingual:” “I have become / third person to myself, unrecogniz-
able / in surgical syllables, a language life” and “Only a sick woman / knows 
her tender organs / are held by an apron of fatty tissue tied / in the quaint 
excess of old world / vowels: oementum.” Clifford receives her test results in 
“March 2002” and learns that she has advanced ovarian cancer. 
In the second part of the collection, Clifford blends humour and sadness 
to reflect upon her physical and emotional transformation from chemotherapy. 
“The Mind of Death” renders Clifford’s great strain to complete everyday tasks, 
like putting on pajamas: “The too-small opening / flattens my ears forward, 
stings, pulls / on my hair, and I struggle / to get one arm, then another into 
the right.” Although this section includes many poems that mourn the passing 
of cancer patients—such as “On Liz, Dying” and “Butterfly Effect”—Clifford 
concludes with the witty “False Face: Rise” which critiques a call for submis-
sion of “inspirational” poetry from cancer survivors. Clifford posits the irony 
of survivors writing “upbeat, inspirational pieces.”
The third section is more deeply concerned with death. “Sitting With 
Catherine” ends with the stark reminder that everyone dies: “the teaching / 
You can’t stay long.” In “False Face: Clinic” a cancer patient dies, even though 
she has a positive attitude, eats healthily, and uses home remedies: “Two years 
later, I see her name in a death notice.” Yet, cancer survivors fight against death 
in “Against Time.” Clifford also recounts therapeutic moments of spending 
time with friends and going shopping, since “Life is too damned short / for 
ugly clothes.” 
The last two sections return to Clifford’s physical changes as she battles 
cancer. In “Bald,” Clifford engages with other women who endure the cycles 
of hair loss and growth. She also shares her physical and emotional wounds 
in “Ragged purple scar,” “Look Good, Feel Better,” and “Venous Refusals.” 
The humorous tone returns when Clifford honours her friend Catherine, a 
cancer patient, who names her wig Alice in “Sometimes you miss people for 
the damndest reasons:” “We teased Alice, swore at / our own itchy inability to 
keep the damned / things on our heads for more / than twenty minutes at a 
shot.” She also honours her cancer survivor friend Kathy who fearlessly flaunts 
her bald head to a police officer in “Kathy, barrel-assing down a back road:” 
“If you got it, girl, you flaunt it.”
Embracing Brings You Back is an engrossing collection of poems that cel-
ebrates the triumph of human will.


Embracing Brings You Back

Harriss
					, Clarinda

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         291 
Gravity or Mother’s soft little hand,
which one tips the pictures to all angles?
Which to be more scared of is hard
to say.  Knowing a giant magnet herds
every legged thing by its ankles         
is not without a subtle horror,                      
but to know Mother’s been here,
dead and boldfaced as an Ingres
odalisque, to handle what’s hers--
what’s left of her weird hort-
i-culture,  viney climbers inching
up the walls, those gilded, hirsute-
looking frames with familial harpies
trapped inside, abandoned by their angels—
it chills the healthy hormones
she also willed our way,   Who can whore,
how happily give in to the ancient
pull and fall, when the witching hour
belongs, as it always did, to her.
She over-waters the spider plants
before she leaves.  Every lover hears
the walls close behind her—hardly
the click of  a husband’s shotgun antsy
to kill, but still sufficiently horrid
to crumble to dust their hardest ardor.
They stumble into morning, shrunken.
Energy plays matter like a harp.
 
                                   
                                                                                                 
                                          
Clarinda Harriss
Mortmain
292             Volume 10, Number 1
Photo: Joe Paczuski”


Mortmain

Isserles
					, Robin G.

Re-Imagining “Progress”: Motherwork, Human
Flourishing and the Political Culture of Care

Lewis
					, Laura

Brown
					, Judith
					 Belle

Accessing Mother Within: A Study of Midlife Daughters’ Use of Maternal Belongings in Mourning

Cihlar
					, James

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering    239 
The Rendezvous
Bar
The three B’s
Buds
Butts
Booze
Apartment
On Farnum
Long
Distance
Tirades
Medication
Lump 
Pressing into esophagus
Hooded sweatshirt
I sent her
What My Mother Used Later
James Cihlar
240    Volume 10, Number 2
James Cihlar
“Kathleen at Vickie’s House, Easter.” Photo: Rita Hermann.


What My Mother Used Later

Burstrem
					, reviewed by Jessica B.

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        305 
Book Reviews
mothers across this strange city as I leave my greatest creation, my greatest 
love with someone else.”
Clere addresses the need to find childcare while she is pregnant to ensure 
a place for her yet-to-be-born child and reflects on this contradictory situa-
tion: “My child is part of this generation of children with weekend parents.” 
Accompanying this revelation are haunting colour images of her preschool 
son, first sitting in the middle of a colourless street playing with toys while 
grey-coloured adults walk by, and then sitting all alone on a deserted downtown 
crosswalk. Clere further acknowledges, “I’m part of this generation of mothers 
who is torn,” as she is shown standing alone and looking forlorn in the empty 
street. She articulates feelings of guilt, the need for independence, and her 
intense longing to maintain a connection with her son. As a mother she feels 
invisible, yet wants another baby to counter this sense of negation. 
Clere’s film addresses the tension many urban Western women experience 
between the “me who wants to be a good mother versus the me who works a 
40-hour week.” A Hard Place has international status with official selections 
at the Women in the Director’s Chair International Film Festival, Chicago; 
Shorts Film Festival, Adelaide; River Run International Film Festival, North 
Carolina; and St. Kilda Film Festival, Melbourne.
Camille Peri and Kate Moses’s Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Chil-
dren, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves is an exhilarating and vindi-
cating collection of narratives by mothers who are coping with expectations 
for themselves. For instance, Fufkin Vollmayer must disregard her own single 
mother’s rage when she chooses to become a single mother herself. Mary 
Morris has to labour to not be an angry, controlling, frightening parent like 
her father. Karin L. Stanford comes to the decision to reject fairy tales and 
not remain silent about sexism within the Black community in order to be a 
good example to her daughter. Lisa Teasley leaves New York City to escape 
“mental slavery”—the racism that she and her multiracial family experienced 
there—which was hindering her ability to mother.
Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, 
Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves 
Camille Peri and Kate Moses, eds. 
New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
Reviewed by Jessica B. Burstrem
306        Volume 10, Number 1
Book Reviews
For many contributors to this volume, expectations of themselves originate 
with society’s expectations of mothers. Ayelet Waldman has to resist thinking 
of herself as a “bad mother” for loving her husband more than their children. 
Janet Fitch must decide whether being a “good mother” means that she should 
place her child’s needs before her own. Constance Matthiessen tells how psy-
chologist Judith Wallerstein’s assertion of the needs of children kept her awake 
at night. Rosellen Brown must come to terms with the impact that her work 
might have on her child. Ariel Gore (of Hip Mama fame), as a lesbian single 
mother, struggles with stereotypical ideas about a mother’s versus a father’s 
role when she finds herself acting as both parents.
Jennifer Allen also struggles with heteronormativity and gender-based 
ideals; unlike her fellow contributors, however, she does not question these 
ideals. When two of her sons, aged three and six, see her naked, she scruti-
nizes her breasts, thighs, and waist, asking herself, “Am I, in total, womanly 
enough to be the standard bearer of sexuality for all their long lives ahead of 
them?” (97). Even more problematic is her characterization of “a pile of boy 
trophies”—including action figures, trucks, and sports trophies—as a “chro-
mosomal-XY mess” (99). And she expects that once they are men, “when you 
tell them that you love them, they will tell you, ‘It’s your job, Mom,’ and you 
will thank them” (104). Maternal sacrifice is present in other essays as well. 
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, in a custody suit, agrees to settle her family’s case out of 
court, and Andrea Lawson Gray sells her home in order to keep her children 
in private school.
Unlike Jennifer Allen, other writers grapple with how to mother their sons. 
Mariane Pearl (the widow of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl) determines 
not to hide the truth about his father from their son; Cecelie S. Berry decides 
to educate her sons about race issues; and Ana Castillo carefully walks the 
tightrope between allowing her son to make his own decisions and raising 
him to be the kind of man a feminist would hope to raise. As Kristen Taylor 
writes, “Mothers always dream big” (167). Other narratives exemplify chal-
lenging choices. Ann Hulbert describes her decision to protect her daughter 
from some of the worry that plagues children today; Charo Gonzalez and her 
husband conceal some of their previous risky behaviours from their children; 
and editor Moses cannot bring herself to burden her children with the news 
of her miscarriage.
Rather than classify and organize the narratives—as I have done here—the 
editors allow them to speak individually and collectively across one another. 
This is a thought-provoking, often haunting book; it cannot be read in one 
sitting, but it is deeply rewarding.


Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging,
Faith, Race & Themselves

Herrera
					, Cristina

The Rejected and Reclaimed Mother in Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo

Terzian
					, Sylvia

Surviving My Mother’s Legacy: Patriarchy, Colonialism and Domestic Violence in Lee Maracle’s Daughters are Forever

Nemzoff
					, reviewed by Ruth

274        Volume 10, Number 2
Book Reviews
children have special needs makes it a useful resource.
In fact, this book includes too much information.  At nearly five hundred 
pages, it may be daunting for a woman with little spare time. Each chapter, 
however, is brief and can be ready quickly—ideal for the mother of a special 
needs child who is practiced in the “grazing” style of reading.  A future edition 
could benefit from an improved layout that would lend itself more readily to 
scanning.
More Than a Mom is a well-researched, in-depth handbook for any mother 
facing the particular challenges and demands of raising a child with special 
needs.
Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief 
 
Evelyn Burns Robinson. 
Christies Beach, South Australia: Clova Publications, 2000. 
Reviewed by Ruth Nemzoff
The first part of Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief reads like a novel and 
should be required reading for anyone thinking of relinquishing a child 
through adoption, adoptive parents, and legislators. Robinson’s account of her 
impregnation by what is now known as date rape, her subsequent pregnancy, 
relinquishment of her child, and lifelong agony should convince readers that 
adoption is always a profoundly difficult and life-altering decision.
The author’s experience is typical of so many young women who were 
told they “would never think about … [the] baby again.” Robinson did not 
have any warm feelings for the man who impregnated her, she did not want 
to have a child, and yet she suffered enormously from the trauma of birthing 
and giving up her child. Her story firmly rebuts the argument that the birth 
mother will forget her baby. 
The second part of the book I find troubling. Robinson argues convinc-
ingly that both the adopted child and birth mother have a right to know of 
each other’s identity. I agree that it is a travesty of justice and human rights to 
obliterate birth certificates and pretend that birth parents never existed. Every 
child deserves the right to know his or her origins. However, Robinson mitigates 
the validity and power of her arguments by suggesting her own experience is 
characteristic of most adoptive situations. For example, she states that “some 
adopters allow themselves to think that the children they were adopting were 
unloved and unwanted and that they were doing not only the children but 
also society a favour by providing them with a home and a family . . . in most 
cases, we know from biological mothers, and to some extent fathers, that the 
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        275 
Book Reviews
children were adopted because they were very much loved” (186). While this 
may be true in many cases, it is not true in all cases.
Robinson claims “adopted people cannot grow and develop to their full 
potential without a connection with their history and heritage.” In fact, many 
children do grow up not knowing their histories. And, while they may long to 
know of their pasts, they are able to succeed in the world. 
Robinson continues to simplify the complexity of adoption: “while birth is 
traditionally considered an occasion to celebrate, adoption is never a reason for 
celebration. Every adoption is a tragedy because it means that there has been 
a family breakdown” (214). Clearly, adoption is much more complicated than 
Robinson implies. A tragedy for the birth mother can mean great joy for the 
adoptive parents, and a chance for adequate food, education, and socialization 
for the child. Adoption triangles are intricate and to describe adoption as tragic 
is only to describe one part of the experience.
Robinson argues that “adoption is ethically and morally indefensible”; she 
envisages a society that is supportive of single mothers, and supportive enough 
of troubled families so they can nurture and educate their children—a society 
in which adoption is unnecessary. Her argument is based on the false assump-
tion that only biological mothers can adequately mother their children. In fact, 
her assumption that biological mothers are always preferable to non-biological 
mothers is not supported by current statistics.
Despite these criticisms, Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief makes a 
compelling case for open and honest adoption and the need to change the 
laws and social customs governing adoption. Robinson may tell but one side 
of the adoption story, but it is an important story nonetheless. 
Adoption and Recovery: 
Solving the Mystery of Reunion
Evelyn Burns Robinson. 
Christies Beach, South Australia: Clova Publications, 2006.
Reviewed by Sarah J. Duncan
Adoption and Recovery: Solving the Mystery of Reunion is a companion volume 
to Evelyn Burns Robinson’s first book, Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief. 
The author, trained as a social worker, combines her clinical expertise in grief 
counseling with her personal story as a mother who gave up her child for 
adoption more than twenty years ago. 
The book is divided into three sections: Personal Recovery, Interpersonal 
Recovery, and Questions. Robinson conceptually connects the established theory 
and literature of grief and loss to the feelings experienced at the time of adop-


Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

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Lying to Our Mothers

Embracing Brings You Back

Mortmain

Re-Imagining “Progress”: Motherwork, Human Flourishing and the Political Culture of Care

Accessing Mother Within: A Study of Midlife Daughters’ Use of Maternal Belongings in Mourning

What My Mother Used Later

Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves

The Rejected and Reclaimed Mother in Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo

Surviving My Mother’s Legacy: Patriarchy, Colonialism and Domestic Violence in Lee Maracle’s Daughters are Forever

Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief

1,574

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