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

Major
					, Laura

English

Audre Lorde – “The Woman Thing”

Rock, Lindsey

The "Good Mother" vs. the "Other Mother": The Girl-Mom

Atnoldi, Katherine

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         169 
Katherine Arnoldi
The Amazing True Story of a 
Teenage Single Mom
170         Volume 9, Number 1
Katherine Arnoldi
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         171 
The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom
172         Volume 9, Number 1
Katherine Arnoldi
The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom was named a “Top Ten 
Book of 1998” by Entertainment Weekly and was nominated for the Will Eisner 
Award in the Graphic Novel. It won the New York Foundation of the Arts Award 
in Drawing; the American Library Association’s Notable Books; and The American 
Library Association’s Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Teen Readers. This book 
advocates for equal access to education for teen moms. It is like a support group that 
teen moms can hold in their hands and encourages them to fight for their rights. To 
purchase the book, go to: http://www.katherinearnoldi.com.


The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom

Embrey
					, Kerri

240         Volume , Number 2
We are in India on a long, winding dirt road, in a line that is hundreds of people 
long. My father once observed, after spending eight hours in a Thai market, 
that crowds in the East are not the same as crowds in the West. Perhaps it is 
the lack of collective impatience (or self-consciousness) that breeds a benign 
and comfortable anonymity, as if you were one fish in a school of many, all 
heading somewhere, bumping gently against one another as you surrender to 
the greater, invisible tide that jostles you. It is as if your destination, instead 
of a pressing end in itself, becomes a small pulse in a larger force. I suppose 
the same could be said for queues of people where they occur; though, in my 
experience here in India, queues don’t exist—not in the linear sense. More 
often, when buying tickets or boarding a train, we have encountered a boister-
ous, but penetrable, mob, which, upon closer inspection, is made up of a large 
portion of bystanders who may not have any interest in what is attainable at 
the front of the line. Yet the Indian style of “lining up” constitutes a kind of 
benign and unified co-existence of wills and tempers, rather than an orderly 
arrangement of exasperated suspension (the kind that descends into a hope-
less counting of minutes and invariably makes me feel like I’m in purgatory, 
not living my life). 
Despite their apparent scarcity, we now find ourselves in a long, orderly 
and slow moving line, in the countryside, a couple of kilometres from the Bay 
of Bengal. We wait, not with impatience but with a spirit of slowed-down 
anticipation, in the highest heat of April. Mercifully, the road is lined with 
trees and vegetation. This and the palest of breezes bring some respite. We 
have been asked to remain silent, to induce a contemplative and receptive state. 
The people in line with us are here from other places in India. There are also 
people from other parts of the world. Matrimandir is not even visible from 
Kerri Embrey
Matrimandir
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         241 
Matrimandir
where we stand. But that is what we crane our necks to gain sight of. Seekers 
must be patient.
Many of the trees are in bloom. Frangipani blossoms waft divine fragrance. 
Huge tamarinds lean over us like protective bodies. The husks and black pits 
lay scattered on the ground, perhaps discarded by monkeys. Amongst them I 
spy a whole pod and though I sense that, given the solemnity of the walk, this 
might be an inappropriate thing to do, the animal scavenger in me picks it up 
anyway. I peel it apart and suck out the gorgeous sour, sweetness. Tamarind is 
the perfect antidote to heat. 
Matrimandir means Temple of The Mother. In the teachings of Sri Aro-
bindo, The Mother represents the great evolutionary, conscious and intelligent 
principle of life. The Universal Mother helps humanity move beyond its present 
limitations into the next step of its evolutionary adventure, the supramental 
consciousness. This is more or less what was written, as I have scrawled it in 
my journal, on the wall of the visitor’s centre. Our tour of Auroville, the city of 
dawn, an international “city” that is an experiment in the evolution of human 
consciousness, ends with this optional pilgrimage to Matrimandir. We decide 
to come along. Others have come on buses. The numbers are shocking. We’re 
not sure what this is all about. Touring this place, the roads winding through 
fields and lush forests with clusters of wonderful dwellings, the visitors’ centre 
with quotes from the Mother including a long piece about how she hopes this 
place will never become a religion, the city plan laid out in the design of a 
galaxy spiralling around Matrimandir, and now this pilgrimage of sorts to the 
temple dedicated to the universal mother, we find ourselves drawn in. Being 
here is like an awakening, or like dreaming—I can’t tell. 
It is probably an hour before we see it. Matrimandir is a giant geodesic 
dome covered in gold discs that reflect the sun. The earth is dug away around 
it and it emerges out of the ground like a great growing sphere of light. There 
are twelve gardens surrounding the dome, named by the Mother: Existence, 
Consciousness, Bliss, Light, Life, Power, Wealth, Utility, Progress, Youth, Harmony, 
Perfection. She has named the land surrounding Matrimandir, Peace. The Mother 
was a namer of things. The nearby city of Pondicherry, France’s first and only 
colonial port in India, is deeply connected to Auroville. Many of the build-
ings around town bear small, unobtrusive marble plaques with names given 
by her. This was one of the first signs that I might be on a quest rather than 
a vacation; we wandered the colonial streets along the water and encountered 
engravings in hand script with words like, Serenity, Contemplation, Solace. I 
was intrigued by the idea of a woman called the Mother going around town 
naming buildings. 
My companion and I have taken our walks through the streets of Pondicherry 
in early morning as the sun comes up on the bay or in late afternoon when the 
heat of the day begins to abate. On one morning, we meet a woman who invites 
us inside her home. She leads us down the hall to a sparsely furnished living 
room to meet her brother, sister and mother. We sip mildly spiced lemonade 
242         Volume , Number 2
Kerri Embrey
as they tell us how they came here from the north to join the Sri Arobindo 
Ashram. Her brother is an architect and an artist. She runs a farm and teaches 
boxing and swimming for the ashram. This project is separate from the city of 
Auroville, but dedicated to the philosophies of Sri Arobindo. He begins to tell 
me a bit about Sri Arobindo’s teaching of yoga. I enthusiastically offer that I 
also practice yoga. But this is yoga that you can do without moving, he says.
The Mother was born, Mirra Alfassa, in Paris, of Egyptian and Turkish 
parents. She had been a spiritual seeker since childhood. When she met Sri 
Arobindo in India she recognized him as the guide encountered in her visions. 
Sri Arobindo’s given name was Aravind Ghose. Born in Calcutta, his Western 
education in Darjeeling led him to English public school and Cambridge where 
he was a brilliant scholar. He abandoned England and his opportunity to work in 
the colonial administration. Upon returning home he became increasingly active 
in India’s growing movement towards independence. When he was arrested by 
the British administration and detained for one year, he experienced spiritual 
revelations that led him to take refuge in the French colony of Pondicherry 
where he would develop his spiritual faculties and become a guru to many. 
The website of Auroville suggests that “the great originality of Sri Aurobindo 
is to have fused the modern scientific concept of evolution with the perennial 
gnostic experience of an all-pervading divine consciousness supporting all 
phenomenal existence. His synthesis was not a philosophic construct, but a 
realization stemming from direct spiritual experience.” Sri Aurobindo believed 
India had the gift of spirituality to give to the world.
When Sri Aurobindo met the Mother he saw in her “an embodiment 
of the dynamic expressive aspect of evolutionary, creative Force.” In India 
this elemental force is traditionally expressed and described as the “Supreme 
Mother.” He called her the Mother because she represented an embodiment 
of an archetype, of a unifying force. The two worked together to find practi-
cal ways to realize his vision of human evolution. I try to think of a spiritual 
movement, a cult or a religion with a man and a woman, a mother and a father 
figure sharing positions of leadership, sharing voices of wisdom. They are equally 
quoted in all the panels I have seen. Though he was only a few years older, she 
far outlived him and it was her vision that guided the creation of Auroville, as 
it organized itself into a city, and the building of Matrimandir. She chose the 
spot on the map for the geographical centre of the town and when the architect 
drove to that spot he found a Banyan tree in an open field.
It is said that Buddha found enlightenment under a Banyan tree. I was 
a dedicated climber, sketcher and hugger of trees as a child and the Banyan 
tree is not like any other. The first one I saw was in Thailand on the property 
of a remote temple; people made pilgrimages there to touch the roots, to tie 
ribbons and garlands of flowers around the trunks of the sacred tree. The 
Banyan is in the fig family. It is unique because its branches form aerial roots 
that reach down into the earth and become new trees. Each of the new trees 
is physically connected to the mother tree. They are a family. When you walk 
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         243 
Matrimandir
under a Banyan it is like you can see her children and grandchildren gathered 
around—taking life from her and supporting her at the same time. 
While the others ahead of us file into Matrimandir we are ushered to the 
benches around the century-old Banyan to sit and wait. When it is our turn 
we approach the massive structure from a large ramp that actually leads down 
into the ground at the base of the dome. We take off our shoes and walk up a 
series of ramps that spiral towards the centre of the dome. It is cool inside and 
dim. Much of the inner dome is still under construction and there are building 
materials and scaffolding lying around below us. Twelve meditation rooms circle 
around the chamber. They are named for aspiring levels of consciousness and 
each represented by a different colour. 
The Inner Chamber is the central space designed as a four-petal flower. We 
walk slowly up and up and then we are at the entrance to the room. It is roped 
off. We are not to go in, just look for a few seconds and move on. I have heard 
about pilgrimages like this. People journey for days in this country barefoot, 
on their knees, up hundreds of well worn stone steps, for a kiss, a hug, a touch 
from, a glimpse of, the guru. But there is no person here; it is a room. The In-
ner Chamber is huge. The dome soars above with twelve pillars supporting it. 
The room is completely white. White marble walls. White floor. In the centre 
is a crystal globe that suffuses sunlight, which falls in a single ray through an 
opening at the apex of the sphere. The Mother said, The most important thing 
is this: the play of the sun on the centre. Because that becomes the symbol, the symbol 
of future realizations. There are no images, no organized meditations, no flowers, 
no incense, no religion or religious forms…I lose my breath. Then I am asked to 
move along, keep walking.
A bus takes us back. My companion and I are set to leave Pondicherry 
tomorrow. I am distraught. I feel can’t go yet. I am not done here. My sleep is 
restless that night and after breakfast I go to the Auroville information centre 
in town. I tell them I want to go back to Matrimandir again. I feel I have to 
go back. Yes, they smile, many people feel that way. They explain that once you 
have been to see Matrimandir you are allowed to go back for a meditation. You 
can spend an hour in the Inner Chamber. If this is something you feel you need to 
do then we strongly encourage you to do it. I explain our schedule, the bus tickets 
leaving today, our flight for Kerala leaving Munnar early the next morning. 
We must get to Munnar tonight. There is always a way one of the men in the 
office says. He makes a phone call, inquires about a hired car leaving from 
Auroville, driving to Munnar. It is one of the Ashram’s cars and a reasonable 
price considering it’s a two-hour trip. They make arrangements for us. That 
afternoon we check out of our hotel, put our bags in the car and drive back 
along the lush roads.  
On the second visit to Matrimandir there is no line-up. It is one of the 
hours in the day set aside for public meditation. We must check in at the 
kiosk, situated at the beginning of the path we spent so long on yesterday. A 
woman writes down our names in the book and gives us each a card. I realize 
244         Volume , Number 2
Kerri Embrey
as we set out again, this time on our own, walking along the tree-lined dirt 
road, that yesterday was the trial, the payment of dues. If one is still interested 
after two hours in the hot sun and a three-second glimpse at the room, then 
you have earned the right to come back and use the space as it was intended. 
Aurovilleans of all ages and descriptions are walking, some hurrying along on 
the path. This is a daily ritual for them, they are coming from their labour, 
their homes, their day of activity, to the temple. Only for those, said the Mother, 
who are serious, sincere, who really want to learn to concentrate. Some greet each 
other with waves as they arrive on the path. 
We reach the dome. It is still massive and awesome, but this time every-
thing seems different. It is less dreamlike, more real. We take off our shoes 
and walk up the ramp again. A man stands at the door. We show him our 
cards. He points me to a cushion on the floor. There are many people already 
sitting, spaced well apart and arranged in concentric circles around the crystal 
in the middle. The room is overwhelmingly white and enormous. The crystal 
is stunning. I can’t think of another word. I feel stunned, small and completely 
awake. I sit down and close my eyes. I think that the top of my head is being 
ripped off. I try to focus on my breath. I am not experienced at meditation. My 
mind wanders. I try to savour this opportunity, to allow it to transform me in 
some way. I listen to my breathing. And then it comes. The music. There is a 
symphony that begins in my head. Beautiful, delightful music, like Handel or 
Schubert, but nothing I have ever heard before. It is there as my mind floats 
in and out of attention. It runs like a stream through my consciousness, until 
someone taps me on the shoulder and whispers that it is time to go. 
We walk out along the path, unable to speak to each other, completely 
absorbed in our own perception. We get to the kiosk again. The taxi is there 
waiting for us. She takes my card, stamps it and hands it back to me. This is 
your pass. Save this, for with it you can come back again, anytime. I look at her 
black, glassy eyes and repeat her words back to her, I can come back, anytime? 
She moves her head slightly from side to side to indicate affirmation, looking 
straight at me, smiling knowingly, as a mother would smile when her child 
has just begun to learn something, something the mother has known for some 
time now, and she smiles, the mother, to see her small beloved in the dawn of 
her own understanding.


Matrimandir

Gerber, Nancy F.

248         Volume 9, Number  1
Book Reviews
social policy to focus her narrative and research questions. She identifies the 
need to balance the private endeavour of cultivating a family and the use of 
public support that is available—although less available to children with more 
severe disabilities. She argues that a sense of community—whether family- 
based, neighbourhood-based, or culturally-based—must complement society’s 
limited public resources.
A true ethnographic study, Battle Cries identifies essential patterns of 
acceptance, understanding, and growth. Edelson’s heartfelt book is written 
specifically for families of children with disabilities and those professionals 
who work directly with them.
Nancy Graham’s unflinching account of surviving her mother’s depression opens 
with an epigraph from Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother: “My 
mother died the moment I was born, and so for the whole of my life there was 
nothing standing between myself and eternity.” This unwelcome delivery into 
loss and pain also describes Graham’s experience: for three months after her 
birth, on 17 March 1962, her mother was hospitalized for severe postpartum 
depression that recurred yearly for 20 years.
Martha Bonner, Graham’s mother, was a lively young woman with many 
friends and interests. Born in 1930 in Hamilton, Ontario, where Graham also 
spent her youth, Bonner left high school at the age of 16 to help support her 
family and was working in the accounts department at Hydro Electric when 
she was introduced to her future husband, Henry Reid, on a blind date. Mar-
ried in 1958, the couple moved to a bungalow in a neighbourhood of the city 
where farm fields and apple orchards once stood. Thus far, the story is familiar 
as the narrative of a young, energetic couple married during the post-war boom, 
eager for a family and their future. Just a few years later, as Bonner sinks deeper 
and deeper into depression, the familiar outlines of a suburban childhood are 
ruptured as Graham enters the terrifying world of mental illness and becomes 
mother and caregiver to her own mother.
Graham’s narrative veers between the nightmare of psychiatric hospitals 
and the nightmare of home, where her mother perpetually teeters on the verge 
of incapacitating depressions. In spite of the considerable grief she feels when 
Afraid of the Day:
A Daughter’s Journey
Nancy Graham.
Toronto: Women’s Press, 2003.
Reviewed by Nancy Gerber
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         249 
Book Reviews
she visits her mother in hospital, a reader senses her relief at no longer being 
responsible for her mother’s safety and well-being. At home, Graham becomes 
exquisitely attuned to minutest shifts in her mother’s mood and appearance: a 
dullness in gaze and increasing lethargy frequently signal the onset of another 
depressive episode. When depression strikes, Bonner takes to her bed, a shell 
of a woman unable to eat, dress, or bathe, let alone care for her children or 
enjoy familial celebrations such as Christmas and birthdays. The unpredict-
ability of these episodes and the disruption that ensues—children who must be 
shuttled back and forth to relatives, an anxious father performing the dual roles 
of family caregiver and wage earner—are exacerbated by the father’s volatile 
temper and frequent arguing and constant tension between the two parents. 
The reader empathizes with Graham when she laments she has a “mother like 
no other”—a mother who cannot enjoy vacations, her children’s achievements, 
the company of loving friends and family—a woman for whom the most 
ordinary pleasures—kissing her children goodbye, going for a walk—demand 
an energy that is just not available. 
As is often the case in narratives of childhood, the earliest passages are 
the most heartbreaking. Here is a prose-poem where Graham imagines her 
mother receiving her first electroshock treatment, in December 1962 when 
Graham was an infant, before the onset of awareness and memory: “a needle 
plunges into a thread-like vein, bleeding muscle relaxant into her body … 
melancholy eyes staring up in fear of the unknown … her body surrenders to 
crudely choreographed spasms … eyes screaming in shocked white silence” (34). 
Such passages resonate with Jo Malin’s theory in The Voice of the Mother that 
women’s autobiographies often contain an “intertext,” an embedded maternal 
narrative that is a biography of the writer/daughter’s mother (1).
Not surprisingly, Graham succumbed to depression in her mid-teens, which 
she sought to medicate by drinking, creating a vicious cycle that deepened her 
despondency. In spite of her dependence on alcohol, she was able to work part-
time and graduate with honours from McMaster University, demonstrating 
resilience and ambition she cannot acknowledge. By the time her mother is 
stabilized on lithium when Graham is in her early 20s, the daughter’s struggles 
with alcohol and self-esteem increase. She develops a raging case of bulimia. 
She tries to protect family members from knowing she is gay, fearing this 
will cause her mother to relapse. She moves from job to job, trying to hide 
her burgeoning depression from concerned friends and colleagues. While she 
seeks help from therapists, she is unable to find respite from the depression 
that dominates her existence. 
Her slow journey toward recovery begins when she leaves the pressures 
of an office job for a life more conducive to writing. The acceptance of her 
prose into a selective program which connects her with an esteemed author, 
entry into therapy with a compassionate psychiatrist, her reconnection with an 
inspirational high school English teacher—all of whom are women—provide 
her with the nurturing she was denied as a child. Gradually she learns not to 
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


Afraid of the Day: A Daughter's Journey

Alexander
					, Meena

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         249 
Everything Strikes Loose
Meena Alexander
In the end
everything strikes loose
Look at my hands
that held you
as the pepper vines
hold to the mango tree
my child, my first child
What fuels the mind
I tell myself
is not grief,
not waste:
just a bird beak
scuffing up leaves
at the tree’s base.
Yet see
the pepper vines slip,
roots clustering
colorless as air.
I plucked the first
fruits for you,
the sour stuff
you spat, the sweet
dribbled down your chin.
You were greedy then
“Amma!’ you cried, pointing
250         Volume 9, Number 2
Meena Alexander
I could not see
if the blackness
at the pepper’s core
had burnt you.
The glare 
was in my eyes,
the flickering leaves,
the golden Pamba river.
Now the river trickles
through low hills,
it tastes of childhood
The boats fly no flags
the races are all done
and flat barges driven by men
bear cinnamon, cloves, dried pepper. 


Everything Strikes Loose

Walks
					, Michelle

Breaking the Silence: Infertility, Motherhood, and Queer Culture

Comeau
					, Lisa M.

Towards White, Anti-Racist Mothering Practices: Confronting Essentialist Discourses of Race and Culture

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         253 
I.
After childbirth
the tenth month’s passion:
a bloodiness
still shifting at her core
she crawls on the mud floor
past the empty rice sacks 
blown large with dust,
rims distended like sails.
Her skin scrapes a tin bowl
with water from the stream,
a metal frame 
bearing a god
whose black blue face
melts into darkness, as a gem might
tossed back
into its own
implacable element.
She waits,
she sets her sari to her teeth
and when the chattering  begins
fierce, inhuman joy,
monkeys rattling the jamun tree,
bellies distended, washed with wind
Passion
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254         Volume 9, Number 2
Meena Alexander
she screams
and screams
a raw, ungoverned thing.  
II.
There are beetles scrabbling
in the open sacks,
chaff flies in the half light
a savage sound in her eyes
struck free
the human realms of do and don’t
the seemingly precise, unalterable keys
dashed to a frenzy
and still the voice holds.
III.
One summer’s day
I saw a heron
small and grey
blinded by an eagle’s claw
it dashed its head
against the Coromandel rock.
The bleeding head
hung on
by a sinew or two
as the maimed bird
struck
and struck again
then turned to rise
an instant
on its sunlit wings.
It was carved in bronze
against the crawling foam
agony
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         255 
Folio
the dead cannot know
in their unaltered kingdoms.
IV.
I am she
the woman after giving birth
life 
to give life
torn and hovering
as bloodied fluids
baste the weakened flesh.
For her 
there are no words,
no bronze, no summoning.
I am her sight
her hearing 
and her tongue.  
I am she
smeared with ash
from the black god’s altar
I am
the sting of love
the blood hot flute
the face
carved in the window,
watching as the god set sail
across the waters
risen from the Cape,
Sri Krishna in a painted catamaran.
I am she
tongueless in rhapsody
the stars of glass
256         Volume 9, Number 2
Meena Alexander
nailed to the Southern sky.
Ai ai
she cried.
They stuffed
her mouth with rags
and pulled her
from the wooden bed
and thrust her
to the broken floor.
I, I.


Passion

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