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

Carranza
					, Mirna

English

Mothering Through Acculturation: Reflections of Salvadorian Mothers in Canada

186         Volume 9, Number 1
I WAS HERE is a media workshop that puts digital cameras and photoblog-
ging websites into the hands of young parents. A group of women, all pregnant 
or parenting, have been documenting their lives in Toronto through their own 
eyes. All have had experience with homelessness. Each participant has her own 
private photoblog, where she can load up her pix and write stories, comments 
and insights. An exhibition of their work recently toured several Toronto ven-
ues including the Rotunda at City Hall and Toronto Free Gallery. It was also 
featured in the Contact photography Festival this May. participants efforts to 
raise awareness about issues affecting young parents has captured the attention 
of Mayor David Miller, staff with Ontario Works, health care professionals, 
social service providers, journalists and the general public. 
The women meet weekly at a community centre where childcare, a hot lunch, 
and TTC tokens are available. The digital cameras are on loan from the National 
Film Board of Canada, as part of the Filmmaker-in-Residence project at St. 
Michael’s Hospital. The project partners media with medicine. 
For more information about I WAS HERE visit: www.nfb.ca/filmmakerin-
residence/iwashere. Workshop participants selected the following images to 
share in this special issue of the Journal of Research on Mothering.
Photo: David Nemeroff
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         187 
I Was Here
Photo by Jess, “One of my first, yet one of my best.”
Photo by Adrienne, “I’m late, but I’ll get there.”
188         Volume 9, Number 1
Young Mothers
Outcast: A person who is rejected from society or home.
Outcast:  Friendless, excluded from a society.
Outcast: One who has been excluded from a society or system.
Outcast:  Alone in the world with no one to care.
With stress on my shoulders and burdens to bear, I am a one-woman army. 
Battles I fight, struggles I overcome, sitting at times wondering, why me, why 
have I chosen this life?
Artist’s Statement
We’ve come together as a group to have our voices heard.
“I guess I kind of liken it to voting,” says Adrienne. “people say it’s just one 
vote, one small voice, it doesn’t count, but you do it anyway because it all adds 
up in the end.”
We want to show that we have many struggles in our lives, but that ultimately 
we are strong, we work really hard. Through photoblogging, “We are creating 
Photo by Keneisha
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         189 
I Was Here
Meghan and Xzavior
windows into our lives,” says Jess. “And hopefully, it will take the judgemental 
edge off and change people’s perceptions of us.”
We have been documenting our journeys, transitions, our homes, our fami-
lies, our daily lives, exploring how and what we see. “Since I started using 
the camera, I look for beautiful things,” says Meghan. “I analyze what I see. 
I think, where would be a nice place to go? I always keep my eyes open; alert 
to what inspires me.”
We hope, in the words of Keneisha, that “people will take time to look at our 
photographs and read our stories, not just look and go, ‘Oh, that’s nice’ and 
walk off. But really look at the work we’ve done and think about what it feels 
like to walk in our shoes.”
    —I WAS HERE Photobloggers
     January 10, 2007
190        Volume 9, Number 1
St. Martin’s Manor
Young Parent Resource Centre, Hamilton
Sharon and Emma
Shannon and Tyler
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         191 
St. Martin’s Manor
Sarah and Liam
Nicole and Raine


I Was Here

Brown
					, Stacey L.

Mothering: Perspectives from African American, West Indian and Latina Adolescents

Humerwood House,

198         Volume 9, Number 1
The following is a collection of statements by some of Humewood House’s 
students when asked, “If you had to make a statement about being a parent what 
would it be?”
 
“If I knew life was going to be like this I would have crossed my legs and 
waited to bring forth another mankind. I would have waited until my guy was 
more mature in his mind. I feel more grown up during this time and pissed off 
that he’s acting like life is not worth the fight. I wish I knew all this before. I 
would of protected myself from all lies. I love my son with all my might but 
if I had a choice I would of waited for a better time.” 
 “I used to hang around silly kids and drink to have fun. After having my 
baby, I became a more responsible person. I started to care for myself rather 
than everyone else. I realized that my actions could have my baby taken away 
from me in a second as I was from my parents growing up. I know now that 
what you do and what you say can have an affect on your child and although 
I’m still growing I’ve learnt that sometimes you have to do better than your 
best to be a good parent to your child.” 
“I use to think that parenting was easy until I had got pregnant and started 
to learn all the things that I needed to know in order to parent positively. 
There is so much you need to know breast feeding vs. bottle feeding or both; 
how to care for your baby if he/she is ill with a cold, fever or simple teething. 
I used to think it was easy until I went through the sleepless nights. I had to 
learn and use all the supports that I could to help because believe even if it’s 
an open ear, it helps.” 
Humewood House
Being a Parent
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         199 
Being a Parent
“Before I got pregnant everything in my life was fine. I had a family who 
loved and supported me and a boyfriend to die for. When I found out I was 
pregnant everything changed. My family disowned me, my friends became 
distant, and my boyfriend was no longer by my side. My daughter was born, 
my boyfriend returned and became a better figure in my life. Right now I’m 
trying to be the best support in all our lives.” 
“Life is hard being a teenager, but it gets much harder being a single teen par-
ent in our society, where people are judged for being young and indifferent.” 
“I will be a good parent that I am sure. All my life I had to struggle with 
family and friends in my life. people are sometimes just damn right mean. 
people say I’m dumb and I caused all the problems in my life. 
My answer to them is I will be a good parent, of that I am sure If nothing 
else that I am sure. 
I once meet this lady who told me I had the power to do better things 
with my life, that people’s expectations of me were always fair and concrete. 
Also that I deserved to be loved just like any other child. 
My answer to that is I will be a good parent, of that I am sure. If nothing 
else of that I am sure. 
It was hard to comprehend that sometimes people make comments before 
using their heads. I had a child and soon realized what people thought of me 
was now irrelevant in my life. It only mattered that I had to care for a special 
little life. ”
All About Me 
Everyday I wake up in the morning ready for another day, but sometimes 
troubles comes my way. I feel like the world is no longer apart of me, but I 
know in my life it’s all about me. I’m no longer looking for myself. I’m now a 
mother-to-be. I got to make the right decisions for me and my family. It’s no 
longer about me. Time is ticking as the days goes by; the nights are longer, the 
days are shorter, but my child’s life has just begun. But it’s not all about me. 
        —Thanesha Sterling 
To my son Sincere: 
Sincere my baby bear 
I love you more than you’ll know. 
Since you I only smile 
Even though you changed my style 
You really are a dream come true, 
Coming straight from your daddy boo. 
Thank God for blessing me, 
For Sincere with eyes to see. 
   Love, your mother, Alisha Bright. 


Being a Parent

Stephenson
					, reviewed by Jenn

274        Volume 9, Number 2
Book Reviews
Taking up this book while on maternity leave and reading it in small bursts 
while the babies napped, I was dismayed, comforted, and galvanized by the 
voices in this essay collection. As its central theme, Parenting and Professing 
considers the problem of the perceived value of “ideal-worker behaviour” 
in two seemingly irreconcilable fields—a value which creates a zero-sum 
equation pitting the all-consuming experience of being a parent against the 
equally all-consuming vocation of being a professor. In the first worrying 
section “Challenges,” several writers confront the practical need to improve 
the system with more and better family-friendly policies, like paid parental 
leave and affordable campus daycare, to reduce the tension between these 
competing roles. But the majority of contributors are more concerned with 
the intangible yet ingrained cultural attitudes towards mothers in academia. 
Some of these tales are surprising in their unpleasantness. Kathryn Jacobs, 
Gale Walden, and Tarshia L. Stanley, for example, narrate their early struggles 
and the anti-child biases they encountered. However, each narratives ends on 
a hopeful note as the writers envision the future they desire. Still on the job 
search, Walden encounters a website picturing the department chair with her 
ten-year-old, “and I know immediately to apply. She isn’t hiding her child” 
(81). Stanley likewise sees a male colleague at work calmly smiling at his little 
boy in tow: “I am jealous.… It’s definitely what I want to look like when I’m 
working” (88).
This tenor of hopefulness continues into the second comforting section. 
Contributors address the benefits that mother/professors and their children 
might receive from full engagement in both academic and mothering spheres. 
In the essay “Elemental MoThEr,” chemist Michelle M. Francl-Donnay 
asks the question, “Can, and does, parenting shape my scholarship?” (122). 
She observes that “sometimes the most interesting thing in a web is not the 
spider but the detritus entangled in it” (129). Encouraged by her children to 
see with their eyes, she is granted a new perspective on her work, arriving at a 
specific revelation about atomic structures by making cut-out molecules like 
paper dolls: “Parenting thus feeds my scholarly life in much the same way as a 
colleague’s artistic work feeds his scholarship in aesthetics” (129). Other writers 
connect parenting experiences directly to successful research on topics such 
as the mother-artist in literature and killifish embryos. “Possibilities” also ad-
dresses some unconventional strategies for blending the demanding realms of 
Parenting and Professing: 
Balancing Family Work with an Academic Career
Rachel Hile Bassett. 
Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005.
Reviewed by Jenn Stephenson
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        275 
Book Reviews
parenting and professing and perhaps thinking outside the box of a full-time 
tenure-track job and traditional home life.
The final galvanizing section focuses on the potential for significant 
cultural change by making parenting more visible, encouraging mothers to 
stop “hiding the baby,” but also aiming to extend the visible constituency of 
academics involved in parenting to encompass fathers, student-parents, step-
parents, foster parents and other caregivers such as those caring for an aging 
parent, an ill partner, or friend. As Bassett suggests recounting the stories of 
academic mothers will provide “a deeper context, a sociological imagination 
that sees the political in the personal, the communal in the private” (12). And 
so this collection inspires me, effectively practising what it preaches by using 
first-person storytelling to change the value system underpinning academic 
culture as a whole to make it less “greedy” in the interests of achieving work-
family balance for all its citizens.
The Development and Treatment of 
Girlhood Aggression
 
Debra J. Pepler, Kirsten C. Madsen, Christopher Webster, Kathryn S. 
Levene, eds. 
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005.
Reviewed by Barbara Schwartz-Bechet
Typically, scientific research related to humans is conducted on males and 
the results of the research are translated to the female population. To counter 
this practice, The Development and Treatment of Girlhood Aggression provides 
insight into the most current—although limited—empirical research that 
studies girlhood aggression. Comparative research between male and female 
youth is presented alongside research conducted solely on females. The text 
serves a dual purpose as an exemplary resource for empirical data and as a 
treatment protocol. It studies the origins of girlhood aggression and pro-
gresses toward a continuum of possible treatment methods.
Several central ideas are presented in the five parts of the text. The edi-
tors’ first goal is to provide a resource for current empirical research. Their 
second goal is to identify key components in the identification and treatment 
of aggression in girls, and their third goal is to encourage further research in 
the field. A central theme running throughout the text is the importance of 
relationships and family in the context of girlhood aggression. Each chapter, 


Parenting and Professing: Balancing Family Work with an Academic Career

Nella,

206         Volume 9, Number 1
I am natural, so are you. 
So young girls you need to stay true. 
Not to him or her but to yourself.
Because when they’re gone, 
you’re left alone to climb that shelf. 
So we need to have wealth in our soul. 
So when they try to bring us down, 
we could stand up straight and bold. 
Don’t let anyone tell you 
what you don’t want to do, especially 
if you know it’s going to hurt you 
and make you sow deeper and deeper 
in a grave. Because we’re all natural, 
and nobody’s slaves. 
Nella
Natural Beauties


Natural Beauties

Harde
					, reviewed by Roxanne

282        Volume 9, Number 2
Book Reviews
she intends as a public service. Gerber reflects on her father’s unanticipated 
stroke, the immediate changes in all relationships within the family, and the 
socio-economic implications of homecare. She thinks out loud about how “we 
have no prayers or rituals for the death of someone who hasn’t died” (3). She 
calls herself a dutiful daughter and documents the struggle to be a wife, par-
ent, doctoral student, sister, daughter, and individual whose consciousness is 
awakened as the paterfamilias becomes dependent on others. The book probes 
two key questions: What occurs when an adult daughter’s already full life must 
suddenly accommodate an ill father and concern for her caregiving mother? 
How does the daughter sustain her own life when her primary relationships, 
at least temporarily, are with her parents?
What stands out for this reader is how Gerber weaves her father’s history 
as a German Jew and an American immigrant into the story of his stroke and 
its impact on her mother. Her father is assaulted, first by the stroke and then 
by the health care system. In her description of the aftermath of the stroke, 
Gerber embeds the story of her mother’s day-to-day life. But Gerber’s rela-
tionship with her mother is not developed in this book. Rather, she shows a 
father who is self-determined at the expense of his wife, and a daughter who 
is torn in two and living a paradox, a disjunction; Gerber “can’t find the words 
to describe my feelings. Ordinary language is not sufficient” (50).
Gerber admits that she feels responsible for and compelled to care for her 
father, but she also acknowledges her naiveté and that she is configured as the 
heroine of the story she writes. Based on Ray’s definition of caregiving as “an 
activity that involves intimacy and connection, in which care is given freely,” 
Gerber identifies herself as a caregiver. I am unconvinced, however, that Gerber 
actually fits the definition. As her book shows through wrenching examples, 
care for her father is necessary, required, and urgent, but women are not always 
in a position to give it freely. 
Award-winning poet Paola Corso’s first collection of short fiction offers a va-
riety of feminine perspectives from different life stages. Set in working-class 
Italian neighbourhoods in the Pittsburgh area, the ten stories are narrated by 
a variety of women and girls who offer views of the ordinary with occasional 
dashes of magical realism. The volume begins and ends with narratives by 
Giovanna’s 86 Circles and Other Stories
Paola Corso.
Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.
Reviewed by Roxanne Harde 
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        283 
Book Reviews
middle-aged women about their mothers. In the first, “Yesterday’s News,” 
a woman mourns her mother with the help of a wildly eccentric thrift-shop 
owner. “Roman Arches,” the final story, is just as sharply imaginative as the 
protagonist returns home for a Christmas visit to find that her aging mother, 
always obsessed with Lucille Ball, now believes she is Lucy Ricardo. Arabella 
blends her memories of her mother with her mother’s stories of her Italian 
village, all interspersed with her mother acting out episodes from I Love Lucy. 
Both stories, like so many others in the book, invoke questions about mother-
daughter relationships, their emotional investments and responsibilities.
While the book is being marketed to adults, the many child and teenage 
voices in this collection and the accessibility of the writing make it equally ap-
pealing to a young adult audience. Girls and young women are the narrators of 
stories that investigate a variety of female relationships: between mothers and 
daughters, friends, co-workers, granddaughters and their “Nonnas,” and sisters. 
The sister stories are especially powerful. In “Unraveled,” Renata examines 
the paradox of her teenage sister’s unwanted pregnancy and their neighbour’s 
inability to conceive a child that her whole family wants. In “Freezer Burn,” 
Charlene resurrects a ball of ancient starter dough for the sake of her sister. 
The original dough came from Sicily with their great-grandmother; Charlene’s 
ability to make this dough rise will ensure her sister’s success. In both stories, 
a little unpredictable domestic magic comes into play, and pain and pathos 
are tempered by positive outcomes. Other stories examine sexual tensions and 
feminine magic: in “Between the Sheets,” the heat and steam of a hospital 
laundry turn a teenage girl into a prophet, and female nature reclaims her own 
in a startling episode from the title story.
Overall, these are enjoyable narratives, compelling, often profound, some-
times poetic. Corso’s strength lies in her ability to combine the mundane and 
the magical and make them immediate, almost tangible, to the reader. However, 
while her descriptive narration is first-rate, detailed but cogent, Corso’s dialogue 
is too often awkward and unnatural. For example, when the sisters in “Freezer 
Burn” narrate family histories, they draw the reader into their stories, as do the 
voices of Corso’s third- and first-person speakers. But when the sisters engage in 
conversation, and especially argument, the stilted dialogue cuts short a reader’s 
engagement with the story. While Corso’s dialogue sometimes disappoints, 
her poetic talent shines through in narration that combines with remarkable 
concision sharp observations of everyday life and philosophical questions about 
what that means for girls and women. Overall, this is an excellent fiction for 
girls and women of all ages.


Giovanna’s 86 Circles and Other Stories

Alexander
					, Meena

264        Volume 9, Number 2
Heaviness fell into things that had no weight.
                                  —Ovid
1. Neela Marya
    
Sometimes things turn small and hard. 
I like that, a pebble, I dug it out of the earth, 
   lifted it up. 
Hard white with streaks of blue inside. 
The blue  shifted around, swirling 
As clouds do in the monsoon sky
Just before the rains start up and the air
Boils up, spills into indigo. Lord Krishna’s color. 
Neela is blue in Malayalam.
Neela Marya I like to call myself.
If any one calls, I will answer to that name.
I lift up the pebble, wipe the dirt off with my skirt. 
I cradle the stone in my skirt, stare at it.
My skirt is rose colored cotton. Fine cotton 
When the sun shines, you can see my legs. 
My legs are solid flesh amma says  
So the sun can’t shine through.
Amma makes me wear a petticoat. 
It bunches up when I climb the guava tree. 
Three for Summer
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         265 
Folio
I tear it off with a guava branch. 
I say “Look amma, the tree did it!”
But she always gets me new petticoats. 
White muslin, trimmed with lace. 
If I had Brussels lace I would trim your petticoats 
Amma says. I know she loves me so.
Once I came in torn and wet 
The white petticoat between my knees.
I wanted to cry Jesus Lord turn me hard and cold,
A pebble with dirt on it
That way no one will see through me.
As amma stared I felt my flesh melt 
Into clouds, slow clouds in monsoon air
Just before the sun burns through.
2. What Ayah Says
In dreams, the world is very small, 
A pebble streaked with jet
Flecks of carmine rush under its skin
Held to the light it gleams as a jamun might
Ruby pocked with indigo. 
I splash my hands with well water
Run my thumb over the pebble
Hold it up to the sunlight. 
I set it on my tongue, 
Close my lips and swallow hard.
Ayah says that when children 
Swallow bits of bone, 
Buttons, stones, they drop right out. 
I wonder if the pebble will.
266         Volume 9, Number 2
Meena Alexander
In front of the house, far from the toilet hole 
is the well filled with black water. 
Everything rises from the well and ends up in it 
Ayah says. Even girls I ask. Especially girls ayah says 
Chewing hard on her clove. Ayah’s back tooth hurts. 
She chews cloves to keep the hurt from spilling.
When children swallow things they shouldn’t
They turn into stones, she says 
They tumble into the toilet hole.
I squat on the toilet hole
The night owl cries so bright
It perches in the leaves of the jackfruit tree. 
Jackfruit is as big as a baby’s head. 
With spikes on it, and pock marks hot as lead
If a jackfruit drops on your head
You will go to sleep ayah said.
 
3. Dark Door
A child went through a dark door into grandfather’s library 
The door was cut in jackfruit wood,
Varnished the color of burnt leaf. 
Breath stops when I think of that door.
A child in a white dress walked in.
Later a child walked out.  
Her eyes were burnt holes for the sun to shine through. 
I do not like to say I. 
She 
Not I. 
Not I, Not I. 
What happened in grandfather’s library makes me float. 
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         267 
Folio
No before, no after. 
No up, down, down, up.
Who will save her? 
Who will save Neela Marya? 
She doesn’t walk on water like Jesus or Gandhi, 
She floats on it, eyes shut, bones poking through.
Will fishing nets turn parachutes, sail homeward? 
Her dress was mussed up, wet.
Whose hand was on her thigh, wrist with hairs white 
As the cabbage butterfly?
I held onto the kitchen door
Amma I cried, no sounds came out of my mouth
I want to kneel inside your red sari, 
Let the pleats swallow me.
Hand covered in a white towel you stirred the pot 
It swarmed with sliced guavas, figs, mango pulp,
You trickled in crushed almonds, rosewater.
The towel over your phantom fist 
Kept hot bubbles from hurting.
Amma, amma, noke, Nyan a, Nyan a  I cried, 
Amma look its me , look I, amma, me
But my lips were shut tight.
Later to keep me from floating 
I crouched by the wellside, picked a tiny pebble
Swallowed it. The pebble was the color
Of bright mist at monsoon time.
But clouds above the guava tree 
Blew about so swift, it hurt to see
I made my eyes huge.
268         Volume 9, Number 2
Meena Alexander
Acknowledgements:
“Everything Strikes Loose” was first published in River and Bridge (Toronto: 
South Asian Review Press, 1996).
“South of the Nilgiris” was first published in River and Bridge (Toronto: 
South Asian Review Press, 1996).
“Passion” was first published in River and Bridge (Toronto: South Asian Re-
view Press, 1996).
“Blood Line” was first published in River and Bridge (Toronto: South Asian 
Review Press, 1996).
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         269 
Folio
Meena Alexander. Photo: Robin Holland.


Three for Summer

Arnoldi, Katherine

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         209 
We are not seeing ourselves here.
We are seeing ourselves in magazines with our jean buttons open, our hair 
long and straight. We are seeing ourselves looking up at the camera, lying back 
on steps that lead up to a building we are supposed to know about.
We are walking on cobblestones.
We are wearing geometry.
We are lying on our elbows with rippled hair that begins a rippled desert. 
We are on our tippy-toes, our knees; we are licking our fingers, popsicles. We 
need moisture.
We are seventeen.
For now we are working at perry Rubber, at Burger King, at Sam’s Steak 
house. For now we are needing a muffler, a box of Tide, to pay the hospital.
We are out on the stoop, thinking about the future, our future.
We are trying not to show.
Who we are are all women. We are all women in a warehouse room. We 
are wearing hair nets. We are wearing face masks. Covered in talc, we are a 
hundred, maybe more. Who we are are the inspectors. We are a roomful of 
inspectors. We are a roomful of inspectors under the fluorescent lights.
We are a room full of inspectors thump-pooshing our air buttons, blowing 
up our rubber gloves, looking for pinholes, defects. We are all women. We do 
not know why there are no men.
We are beginning to show.
Our water is supposed to break. We do not know what that means. Your 
water breaks, then you go to the hospital.
We are carrying trays of food through double doors. On one side everything 
is carpet, cool, candlelight, white tablecloths, red napkins, the clink of glasses, 
Katherine Arnoldi
Seventeen
210         Volume 9, Number 1
Katherine Arnoldi
the muffled sound of ice shaking. On the other, everything is dropping, clanging, 
steel surface, slippery tile, plates of steak bones, steam, comfort, warmth.
All things are full of labor, our mothers say. We are the girls that are be-
ginning to show. Our mothers are at work. Our fathers we have not yet met. 
When the sun sets the boys will be snow under the streetlights, when the sun 
rises we will watch the fire hydrant water fall. We are the girls that you must 
see. We are on the outskirts of town, walking by the side of the road, standing 
in line. We are leaning on the porch with New York in our eyes, with Canton, 
Ohio, with Huntsville, Arkansas, San pedro, Guatemala, Delhi there. We are 
the ones the men want to rock like a horse when we are a whir of dust, when 
we are too young. We are in the cane with no way out, in the warehouse room, 
back there under the bed, hiding.
We will take our diaper bags out. It is necessary for us to crawl across the 
railroad tracks, to hit the top of our heads, to make a bigger graph, a longer 
curve. A hundred of us thump-pooshing our air buttons, with clouds above 
the fluorescent lights, with varicose veins to hide. Not for one moment are we 
not smiling, are we not polite, do we not commiserate.
Counting is not something that is done to us. We count the days until this, 
the hours until that. It is 11:49, 11:50, 3:24, 3:29, six months from a G.E.D., 
almost closing time.
We are not seeing ourselves here. If we are walking by the side of the road, 
pushing a stroller, it is just because the bus was late. We cannot get one more 
pink slip. If you see us in line it is because we are thinking ahead, past the 
end of the line, way up front. We are seeing ourselves in the future, wearing 
something different than what we have on just now, in a place of our own.
We are not seeing ourselves here at the end of the line, explaining that 
our heat his been turned off, that we might need some help. We are not see-
ing ourselves being told that we make too much, but that if we do not get our 
heat back on by next week, she is sorry, but she will have to put our children 
in foster care.
We are still seeing ourselves in magazines. We want to be discussing date 
rape in a circle of girls from the dorm. We want to be discussing the health 
care system, giving input. We want to have our picture taken in front of our 
paintings, we want to take our shirts off in the park, to read our poetry up 
there at the mike.
Every page is something we want to see ourselves being. We are turning 
page after page, looking back and forth. There are boots and flannel, leather 
and dresses with flowers. What we are really looking for is ourselves. We are 
turning pages, looking at the background for a teething ring, a box of pampers, 
a child running up behind with arms outstretched, hungry. We are not seeing 
teenagers who are mothers. There are no mothers at all. There are none of us 
that are part of the collective, setting up installations, chipping in for the lights, 
the set. It is not us there getting the tattoo, having something pierced, walking 
with the man with the baggy pants and the crew cut, living in the loft with the 
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         211 
Seventeen
man who is also a sculptor , who is also in the band. We do not see any factory 
workers, no one with a hairnet on, a face mask. No one in a roomful of one 
hundred women thump-pooshing our air buttons, trying to make quota. No 
one with an apron, a tray of drinks, no one in a hat from Burger King. No one 
like we are. We are still looking front to back. We have to be honest, to face 
up. We are not seeing ourselves here.


Seventeen

Arcana, Judith

228             Volume 9, Number 1
In the Service we spoke clearly and distinctly:
We said, This is Jane from Women’s Liberation;
please leave your name, your number and a message.
We’ll call you back. When she did, we did; then
we said, What was the date of your last period?
When we met to talk, we said, Are you sure
you want to do this? When she said Yes,
we said syringe, speculum, dilator, curette;
we said vagina, we said cervix, we said uterus,
telling how to open it from the outside;
sometimes we had to say forceps, placenta, labor,
trimester, hours, contractions, fetus.
(To each other, learning, we said it feels like
the roof of your mouth, those ridges up in there;
the curette scrapes along those ridges, spoonlike.
We said you can feel the shape, like a textbook
illustration; it feels just like the picture looks,
it feels just like you think it will; that helps. Later,
sometimes we said, She was more afraid of the shot
than anything else. Or we said, Her cervix was so tight,
I thought I’d be there for an hour, my arm frozen,
my shoulder numb, holding that dilator still.)
Lying there, some would ask, so we said No,
we’re not doctors; we’re women just like you.
We needed to know how, so we learned it –
you know, just like you learn anything.
The Abortion Counseling Service of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, now called 
“Jane” in histories of women’s health movement in the USA, worked with more than eleven 
thousand women and girls (the youngest under twelve, the oldest over fifty), all of whom 
came to the underground group for abortions before the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. 
Wade in late January of 1973. Women in the group always called it “the Service,” and re-
ferred to ourselves as “Janes.”
In the Service we said
