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

Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering Winter/Spring 2007, Vol 9, No 1, 267 pages

Bailey, Lucy E.

236         Volume 9, Number  1
Book Reviews
Unfit Subjects:
Educational Policy and the Teen Mother
Wanda Pillow.  
New York: Routledge, 2004. 
Reviewed by Lucy E. Bailey
Wanda Pillow’s Unfit Subjects: Educational Policy and the Teen Mother turns a 
critical lens on a vital but rarely studied issue shaping young mother’s experi-
ences—that of educational policy. Asking “whether teen mothers fit in public 
schools and which teen mothers are fit for an education,” Pillow’s potent, 
sophisticated text takes its place within a growing body of feminist scholarship 
that seeks to interrupt the demonization of pregnant and mothering teens and 
their symbolic use in debates about declining family values. Pillow, a Profes-
sor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois-Champaign, 
draws from ethnographic research in schools, policy, history, popular culture, 
and congressional hearings to trace the development and racialization of 
dominant cultural narratives about school-aged mothers, their expression in 
public policy, and their effects on women’s experiences. This text is a substan-
tive contribution to feminist scholarship and to understanding more fully the 
intricate ways young mothers’ lives are shaped by larger political, cultural, and 
educational forces. 
Pillow extends knowledge of pregnant/mothering teens in a number of 
ways. Most importantly, she explains that policies such as Title IX (American 
Educational Amendment Act of 1972) explicitly include pregnant/mothering 
students as a category of persons protected from sex discrimination in public 
schools. Despite such protection, Pillow catalogues practices in schools that 
testify to widespread noncompliance with policy, as well as significant discom-
fort with the idea of teen motherhood, practices as segregation, discrimination, 
inferior curriculum, and administrative negligence. Indeed, schools seem to 
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         237 
Book Reviews
evade their mandated responsibilities, in part because working to accommodate 
the needs of young mothers may be misconstrued as affirming their sexual 
behaviour and reproductive labour. 
Policy implementation, subject to the vagaries of local control rather than 
federal oversight, is inconsistent and contradictory. This pattern is intensified 
by the absence of case law on school-aged mothers as a basis for guiding or 
compelling services. Rather than working to provide equal opportunity, schools 
construct self-sufficiency and advancement as women’s individual responsibil-
ity (“it’s your mess, you deal with it”) to avoid the presumed fate as a future 
“drain” on social and economic resources. Young mothers bear the burden of 
such beliefs with education unequal to that of their non-mothering peers. 
Among the text’s most powerful chapters is Pillow’s analysis of contemporary 
abstinence-education initiatives (chapter 6) that not only dictate what constitutes 
legitimate sexual activity but provide the very backdrop for cultural narratives 
of teen mothers as deviant. In other chapters, Pillow exposes the intensely 
racialized/classed threads infusing narratives about pregnant/mothering teens 
as a “contaminating” force and “social problem,” as well as schools’ differential 
treatment of young women on the basis of race and class. Pillow ends the text 
with a vision of education for teen mothers, detailing ways schools can better 
serve students through providing “access to make up tests or work…the provi-
sion of appropriate seating” for pregnant women, “access to bathroom breaks,” 
and more flexible scheduling (62). Pillow charges schools to acknowledge their 
role as a “front line service provider” (79) for these young women. 
This informative, theoretically sophisticated text is a useful call to action 
for school workers committed to equitable schooling practices, for scholars 
interested in gender and education issues, and for advocates for the rights of 
young mothers to reach their full human potential. 
It Could Happen to You is both entertaining and enlightening. Martha Brock-
enbrough, a young professional who worked for Microsoft, takes the reader 
through her personal journey as a mother, from its beginnings when she decided 
to have a baby through to her daughter Lucy’s first birthday. Brockenbrough’s 
diary does not offer a prescriptive, academic, or theoretical view of motherhood. 
It Could Happen to You:
Diary of a Pregnancy and Beyond
Martha Brockenbrough.
Riverside, NJ: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2002.
Reviewed by Linda Liebenberg


English

Unfit Subjects: Educational Policy and the Teen Mother

Arcana, Judith

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering      223 
I filled out the goddamn form. You already know my blood type, every shot 
I ever had; you know my mother had diabetes and my father had a stroke 
– and his father deaf in one ear. That’s it. What else do you want? Do you 
think if you follow me home I’ll keep you? Do you think when you come to 
my door I’ll let you in? What do you think I have for you? Thirty-eight years 
of birthday presents tied up with ribbons? Well, I don’t. I don’t have anything 
for you. I never had anything for you. I’d have stopped you being born if I 
could – but nobody would do it! They were all afraid of getting caught, being 
punished by judges like the damn fools sending you after me now. Oh, now! 
You want to know if I like music, if I have curly hair, thin earlobes? Why not 
ask to see the strawberry birthmark? I bet you wonder why I didn’t leave you 
a token, a silver ring like in the movies. It’s simple: I never wanted to give you 
anything but away. You think I’ll tell you about your father, but I can’t tell you 
what I don’t know. That was a bad time, a bad time in my life – and it’s none 
of your business. What makes you think what you need matters more than 
what I want? Do you really believe I’m your mother? Especially now, now 
that we know anybody, anything, can hold those eggs, hold them and grow 
them just like a sitting hen? Now they’ve got plastic boxes that’ll damn near 
do the job. In twenty years people like you will go looking for those boxes, 
won’t they? They’ll want to see their own box, just like you want to see me, 
with your phony nostalgia, your pathetic curiosity. Well, you can just pack it 
in; pack it in and give it up. Even if you do win in court, what’ll you get?  My 
name and address, my phone number? Then you’ll be like the people who call 
me at suppertime to sell me something – credit cards, life insurance, vacation 
cruises – but I just hang up. So you’re out of luck. Like the kids who show 
up at school with welts on their arms, looks like you got a bad one. Do you 
think you’re missing something, you poor abandoned child? Play the hand 
you were dealt and stop asking for favors. Why do you think what you want 
matters so much more than what I need? You want me to say not a day went 
by I didn’t think of you, wondering what you look like, how you turned out. 
Celia finally responds, 1998
224         Volume 9, Number 1
Judith Arcana
You want me to say I think of you every year on the day you were born. You 
want me to lie to you, but I won’t. That’s the kind of mother I am, the kind 
who won’t lie to her kid. Go ‘way from my door, kiddo, you’re just a Jehovah’s 
Witness to me.
 


Celia finally responds, 1998

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering      227 
For all the Mary Catholics
Mary Catherine came to public school because of money,
sat down next to me; Mary Elizabeth stood behind us
on the line in gym, whispering I ought to join
the Brownies; Mary Frances shared a geography book 
(there never were enough in Miss King’s room);
sweet Mary Jean showed me a shortcut home,
dangerous, down the alley (now she drives high
school girls across state lines, skipping
parental consent); Maria Teresa showed me
newborn puppies in a basket, then cut me cold
when I would not sing Jesus in December;
cute Mary Alice had a crush on my brother,
sighing they never could marry; famous Mary Jane
with her shiny black shoes traded me St. Francis
for a gas station pinup; Mary Rose shared
my locker, my Kotex, my Kleenex; Mary Ellen kissed
me on the mouth and laughed; shy Mary Jo
worshipped Audrey Hepburn in the dark; quiet 
Mary Ann died at the Shut-Eye Motel,
blood from her uterus crusted on her thighs; tough
Mary Margaret moved to Detroit, seven children,
eight years, never answered letters; funny
Mary Louise called her Dungannon brogue
a French accent; Maria Francesca prays outside
the clinic where I work; Mary Patricia (now M. Pat)  
called me after thirteen years to ask, Is the pill
safer now? then got divorced and married my brother;
Mary Helen marched with me all the way
down State Street, holding Mary Magdalene
over our heads; and angry Mary Carol goes to Mass
for the music, the poetry, the rush of spirit, 
crying in pure nostalgia: They can’t keep me out!


For all the Mary Catholics

Editorial Masthead

Byrd, Deborah L.

If You Build It, They May Not Be Able to Get There: The Challenges of Mentoring Teenaged and Low-Income Single Mothers Through an Undergraduate Service-Learning Course

Gamber, Cayo

252         Volume 9, Number  1
Book Reviews
especially sexist, racist, patriarchal, and pejorative view of women.
Informative articles are presented that invite readers to consider significant 
issues such as the psychological impact of pregnancy and birth as they relate 
to a couple’s developmental level and history of coping with change. Lynch 
provides a critical reminder to therapists to explore a couple’s previous unwanted 
pregnancies and decisions around these significant events. Kleinplatz provides 
a thorough review of how fertility is understood and conceptualized in North 
America. She respectfully suggests that infertility is “perhaps … deep within 
…  not linked to biomedical approaches alone” (18). 
Unfortunately, Schoenewolf ’s contribution mars an otherwise useful vol-
ume. Replete with expert and pathologizing language, he links the Vampire myth 
to fantasies of passive-aggressive males and case histories of couples enacting 
this fantasy. Schoenewolf ’s description of a fantasy/dream involving a “black 
girl” and a white male who inserts a syringe into the girl’s neck and sucks her 
blood is disturbing and racist. Further, his Freudian psychoanalysis connects 
these fantasies to phobia about women’s breasts. In fact, this article perpetuates 
a disparaging view of women and men alike, and I am not convinced by the 
rationale provided for its inclusion despite objections by three members of the 
editorial board. An article on grief after miscarriage or identity development of 
new parents would have been a more meaningful addition to this resource.
Overall, Couples and Pregnancy provides practical guidance to therapists 
working with couples and individuals around issues of fertility. I would recom-
mend this book to counselors, social workers, and psychologists, but would 
advise them to skip the article by Schoenewolf and seek out resources that 
embrace cultural diversity and offer more balanced views of family systems. 
This volume is comprehensive in that the researchers have studied a broad range 
of individual workers (differing in age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, 
and skill level—from managerial and professional workers to lower-level wage 
earners), companies, geographical locations (both domestic and international), 
and types of studies (from individual case studies to multi-method studies). The 
organizational scholars chosen to contribute to this work bring well-considered 
research, insightful theoretical perspectives, and sound praxis to their individual 
contributions. Given that American workers not only work the longest work 
Work and Life Integration:
Organizational, Cultural, and Individual Perspectives
Ellen Ernst Kossek and Susan J. Lambert, eds.  
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005.
Reviewed by Cayo Gamber
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         253 
Book Reviews
hours of any industrialized nation, but also are subject to “the most unequal 
income and benefit distribution in the industrial world” (171), a volume such 
as this is both timely and indispensable in its close and exhaustive study of 
the ways in which “[j]ob quality; the ability to control when, where, and how 
one works; performing tasks that enhance skills and careers; work and societal 
cultures that value personal life; and opportunity structures that facilitate job 
security, mobility, and access to work-family supports” contribute to success-
ful work-life integration and balance (4). In addition, this volume is timely in 
arguing that quality enhancement rather than cost containment should guide 
the way in which employers invest in their employees.
In their cross-cultural analyses, the researchers also substantively address 
matters of equity and social justice. For example, many American workers 
experience “the pressure to get tasks done faster; the pressure to work longer 
hours; and the pressure to work 24/7, or anywhere and anytime, which has 
been created by the widespread availability and use of cell phone, e-mail, voice 
mail, and fax machines” (46). Many European workers, on the other hand, live 
in countries where “labor and/or government have been active in attempting 
to create a social force that legitimizes the value of time spent by parents with 
family” (57) and, as a result, “limits are being placed on the maximum hours 
employees may work per week, and rest periods and holidays are being man-
dated” (8). Moreover, in countries such as Norway and Sweden, family care is 
constructed as a collective, rather than an individual, responsibility; thus, one’s 
community and government are expected to intervene in work-life/work-fam-
ily relationships. In this volume, cross-cultural comparisons also include an 
investigation into the ways in which globalization impacts southern-hemisphere 
countries, where globalization, on the one hand, can increase women’s “op-
portunities for employment and economic independence” and, on the other 
hand, can reinforce “traditional gender hierarchies in developing societies by 
placing women in segregated and low-wage work” (367). The scholars argue 
that as we become increasingly interconnected, attending to the conditions of 
all workers in all countries will be vital to improving work-life policies.
In their feminist analyses, the contributors point out that while women 
traditionally were held responsible for work-family “issues,” today both men 
and women not only are responsible for balancing work and family, they also 
are impacted by the fact that the work and life spheres “are socially constructed 
as separate and discrete, are set in adversarial relationship to each other, and are 
differentially valued” (174). In addition, work spheres themselves are gendered: 
“linear thinking, rationality, assertiveness, and competitiveness—typically are 
thought of as masculine” while “empathy, listening, and sensitivity —typi-
cally are thought of as feminine” (175). The researchers argue that men and 
women should not be seen as intrinsically different. Often it is organizational 
structures that maintain male privilege in the work place and that make it ap-
pear that men are more attached to work than women. That is to say, women 
may display less attachment to their work “not because they are women but 
254         Volume 9, Number  1
Book Reviews
rather because they are stuck in dead-end jobs” (330). Moreover, in evaluating 
work-life integration, it is worth recognizing that “the division of labor within 
households is not taken into consideration in typical work structures”: “[m]en 
spend an average of 40 minutes each day on cooking and routine housework, 
compared to women for whom it occupies up to 2 ½ hours” (333). In fact, “[n]ot 
only do organizations fail to recognize that women carry more responsibility 
at home, but it is common for these facts to be turned around and used as the 
basis for prejudice against women” (333).
I wonder if, perhaps, the researchers might have gained from expanding 
the definition of “life”—that is, not focusing their research on life as it is framed 
by family responsibility. Editors Kossek and Lambert had considered such an 
expanded definition and decided against it, however, when practitioners in the 
field argued that redefining the field in terms of “quality of life” issues rather 
than work-life issues would make it even more difficult to sell work-life in-
novations to American employers (515).
In its charge to change the work place to fit the workers, this volume will 
appeal—widely and fully—to academics, practitioners, policy makers, and 
organizational leaders. 
Janet Chawla’s edited volume on “birth and birthgiving” in India is a significant 
collection of essays signaling new directions for critical, complex, passionate 
research and writing on birth and birthgiving within a context of ever increasing 
globalization. Focusing on the threatened practices of indigenous birth knowl-
edge and the work of dais (traditional midwives) in India, this book celebrates 
indigenous traditions relating to birth and their practitioners, birthgivers.
Chawla’s opening essay records through a religio-cultural lens her journey 
toward dais-focused research, initiated by MATRIKA. She enters the complexi-
ties of Western and Indian feminisms, motherhood discourses, essentialism, 
the biomedical technologizing of birth in India, caste and gender disparities, 
religion, the targeting of dais in development discourses, and the problem of 
representing research subjects. Chawla studies “genealogies of the sacred as 
they pertain to birth and birthgivers” (52). For example, she discusses female 
procreative blood and its relationship to the “demonic” feminine in Vedic and 
Birth and Birthgivers: 
The Power Behind the Shame 
Janet Chawla, ed.  
New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 2006.
Reviewed by Nané Jordan


Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural, and Individual Perspectives

Rose
					, Rachel

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         101 
Rachel Rose
You take your son and daughter to the lake
to feed the ducks, you hold your daughter’s hand 
and run quacking through the small daisies, then fall down
in a heap, kicking your legs in sync with her legs,
laughing out loud. Your son watches from a bench, sighs and calls,
“Mama, are you drunk again?” 
The couple bike-riding past look over their shoulders, 
an old man raises his binoculars.
It is the again that gets you, as though 
every day you get drunk and drag your children out to chase mallards.
As though he’s ever seen you drunk, your carefully protected firstborn,
as though you manage to drink more than a glass of red
a couple times a month. You tell him 
that he will never see you drunk
and something in your voice stops you both from saying any more.
You give them their bread crumbs
and watch as through a glass, darkly,
their delight at the painted turtles who poke their shy beaks
up from under the ducks, and you swallow
the tannic memories,  protective
of them: they will not know what it is to see,  as you saw,
grandma passed out on the upstairs bed, to see grandpa
raving with alcohol, prophet in a cave, flinging his dark
sticky curses. Your son will not, as you did,
hold your mother’s hand and lead her crying from their
house back to her car, and he will also not
Drunk
102         Volume , Number 2
Rachel Rose
be grateful for this, though it has cost,
because he will not know. 
Just as your friend whom you love,
recalls with wonder her son saying, 
after she told him to clean up all the flour he’d spilt,
“Mama, was anyone ever as mean to you as you are to me?”
and how she swallowed her words, remembering her father
who bent the metal hangers across her shoulders, 
and No,  I didn’t understand my father’s yelling, but I was so afraid,
though he would say he protected me all his life
from the wooden spoons his mother used
to beat the questions out of him. No, they will not understand
what they have been spared, because we have also spared them
this knowledge. We have swallowed it
and set our lips, knocked back that ancient vintage, 
those complicated, full-bodied, stone fruit notes
that linger on the finish.
Previously published in Event 35 (2) (Fall/Winter 2006). Reprinted with permis-
sion.


Drunk

Sempruch, Justyna

250         Volume 9, Number  1
Book Reviews
blame herself for her mother’s illness and to appreciate the ways in which she 
and her mother are both alike and different.
Painfully honest in its depiction of insidious symptoms such as hopeless-
ness and self-punishment, Graham’s memoir is an important addition to the 
literature of depression and an eloquent reminder of how rupture to early 
mother-daughter bonding has lifelong consequences.
In this collection of research studies, Diane Halpern and Susan Murphy are on 
a revolutionary mission to rewrite the work-life conflict into a dynamic vision 
of work-family interaction. Embracing research trends, potential challenges, 
and best practice models across employment strategies and family arrange-
ments, they seek to foster change.
Working parents are often stressed and tired, but so are stay-at-home 
parents and working adults without children or other care responsibilities. In 
fact, current research does not support traditional assumptions about happy 
and relaxed stay-at-home mothers. Working women are less depressed and 
generally healthier and better integrated in social dimensions of life. Parents in 
low-paid jobs with high work demand and little control over their work pat-
terns, however, often experience stress. Hence, Halpern and Murphy link the 
phenomenon of burnout to the social environment and encourage companies 
and organizations to invest in family friendly work policies.
Boundaries between paid work and family life have always intersected, 
but in light of the increasing precariousness and instability of employment, the 
organizational context and culture of the workplace are of crucial importance 
to working parents. The issues driving incompatibility between work and home 
make the most attractive employees less interested in professional advance-
ment and, for the obvious reasons of security and comfort, more committed 
to their families.
As Halpern and Murphy show, to understand how employees respond to 
work-life demands we need a broad picture of the causes of work-life conflict. 
Such factors as cultural diversity, race, and individual differences in personality, 
as well as life style and resources, often determine how two individuals react 
to the same stressor or the same occurrences of conflict. Non-white employees 
From Work-Family Balance to Work-Family Interaction:
Changing the Metaphor 
 
Diane F. Halpern and Susan Elaine Murphy, eds.  
Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005.
Book Reviewed by Justyna Sempruch
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         251 
Book Reviews
feel less safe than their white counterparts in discussing non-work issues in the 
workplace, and often report that their immediate supervisors are more critical 
of their efforts to balance work and non-work concerns. 
Organizational values and sensitivity are needed in conjunction with 
family policies to bring about effectiveness in balancing the demands of work 
and home life. The foundational argument here, and perhaps the book’s most 
valuable message, is that eliminating barriers to success implies an under-
standing that childcare is everyone’s business. Another important issue is the 
lack of role models for women at the leadership level. There is also a need for 
quality part-time jobs, especially at the professional level, where often there 
is a stigma associated with part-time employment and remuneration is not 
proportional to the full-time rate. As paid employment is rarely optional, few 
families with children can afford to own a home with only one wage earner. 
The book’s final premise is thus to redefine the research agenda: it is time to 
shift the negative focus (for example, the view that mothers who work full-
time neglect their children) to the systematic investigation of conditions that 
facilitate the work-family balance. To that end, Halpern and Murphy suggest 
the introduction of cafeteria-style benefit programs that allow employees to 
craft their benefits package to meet specific family needs. Other methods are 
job sharing, alternative job arrangements, telecommuting, and on-site day 
care facilities.
Couples and Pregnancy: Welcome, Unwelcome and In-Between, published simul-
taneously as volume eight of the Journal of Couples Therapy, includes seven 
articles and one commentary on topics such as men’s experience of grief after 
abortion, a therapist’s awareness of a client’s unwelcome pregnancy, dealing 
with the death of a baby, and Virginia Satir’s perspective that “We are not 
creators of life; we are only activators” (1).
A major strength of this book is the inclusion of many case studies of 
couples and clients seen in therapy and clinical settings. Cultural diversity and 
divergent views of “family” are not included here, however. For the most part, 
the articles reinforce dominant perceptions and Schoenewolf ’s article, “Of 
Breasts and Men: Three Generations of Vampire Coupling,” promulgates an 
Couples and Pregnancy:
Welcome, Unwelcome, and In-Between
Barbara Jo Brothers, ed.
Binghampton, NY: Haworth Press, 1999.
Reviewed by Gina Wong-Wylie


From Work-Family Balance to Work-Family Interaction: Changing the Metaphor

Proulx-Turner
					, Sharron

40         Volume , Number 2
sour apples for pie in a basket
plucked from a tree far from the farmhouse
& under the tree, a blanket
a cover in the wind, sweet solitude
of an afternoon alone
& young joany dancing
her dress swirling high
both knees beautiful still
& love in her eyes
ten years later, young still
& ducks on the water
the blue on their backs shining out
from her seven little children
through grandma joan’s dark eyes
their circles pooling
laughter from the beach
there would be days like that, days when hearing laughter from around the 
kitchen table meant a game of euchre or crib & danger was as far away as the 
beach & the ducks & the heat. 
but children can neither measure time nor distance & how could I have known 
that for a teen, a half hour’s walk was all it’d take to reach the sand & trees that 
led to that welcoming beach & the warm august waters of the ottawa? how 
Sharron Proulx-Turner
rhythm methods & watery melodies
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         41 
rhythm methods & watery melodies
could I have known that throughout my teens I’d spend my years sitting at 
the kitchen table helping grandma joan with schoolwork so different from my 
own? her upgrading elementary through high school & on to business college 
while I juggled her learning & my own? I even learned shorthand, which I 
promptly replaced with the sweet scent of love in my eyes.
& the sweet scent swelled with my first born, graham. walked to the hospital 
with my suitcase in hand – happy and excited. the hospital was french & catholic 
& the nuns tried to make me wear an old tin ring on the wedding finger, so I 
made like I couldn’t understand french. but they knew I could & they called 
me madame this & madame that, as if that would wed me in time.
my labour was induced. the baby’s head was too big, the doctor said, & I 
walked the halls, clinging to handles & bright lights & facing the pain on my 
own. nurses changed shifts three times that day before my baby was born & a 
nurse took him away while the sweet smell of life was as fresh as the memory 
of my own birth, his body my heart. I wanted to breast feed, I told her & she 
made like she didn’t understand english & told me, go to sleep. rest. in french. 
& then in english brought a bottle & formula after baby was wiped down & 
dressed & wrapped. we had no visitors all the days we were there. I called my 
aunty when baby was born & went back to my bed to sleep.
it took grandma joan a long time to warm up to graham. wasn’t long adoring 
him once she warmed up, but it was the warming up that took a while. she 
was bound & determined I’d do it on my own. you chose this path, she said. 
now live with it.
thing is, I loved my new path & live with my baby I did. a prouder mom 
couldn’t exist & what I really wanted was to share my joy. yes, when he was 
born he looked like a cross between diefenbaker & mr. magoo &, yes, his head 
was very large, but me, I took bus rides in the city just to face him out from 
my belly so’s old ladys could coo & caw at him. I’d sit on park benches & front 
steps & go down the street house by house, only later learning that’s not really 
how things are done in the city. my boy was born while the thunder reached 
down from snow clouds & onto this place that was unfamiliar to us – a city. 
we’d grown to know one another in a quieter place. 
but, there we were nonetheless & we didn’t stay long in that city. I’d been at 
carleton, on a scholarship, culture shocked & taking math. these were the days 
before computers & a single mom couldn’t get a student loan in ontario. could 
in alberta, though. 
right about the time I started helping grandma joan with her homework 
– when I was twelve or thirteen – I learned about chinooks in school. I was 
42         Volume , Number 2
Sharron Proulx-Turner
both fascinated & didn’t believe it for a minute. so, up we packed, me and my 
baby boy, & moved to calgary. wasn’t there two weeks when I found I couldn’t 
get a student loan for two years. didn’t care. never looked back.
& though I longed for my homeland
for water & bear & sand
there’s a breathlessness about the prairie
that opened up my life
like a basket of sweet red apples
under a late summer tree
the white of my hair
against the bark of the green of the tree
