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

Grace, Marty

A 21st Century Feminist Agenda for Valuing Care-Work

Driver, Susan

English

Reading Adrienne Rich's "Of Woman Born" as a Queer Feminist Daughter

Middleton, Amy

Mothering Under Duress: Examining the Inclusiveness of Feminist Mothering Theory

Gustafson, Diana L.

Book Reviews 
The issues of race, class, and gender are also woven throughout the 
book. At the time of legislation most midwives who were authorized to practice 
were white and middle class (like those most involved in crafting the legisla- 
tion). Several essays discuss the need to incorporate more women of colour, 
Aboriginal women, and culturally relevant care to make midwifery services 
truly accessible to all. 
Finally, the importance of women's voices is interlaced throughout the 
essays. In some cases, they are the voices of midwives who share the unique 
needs of women in their communities. More subtly, the collective voices of 
Canadian women who want their birth choices to be respected are heard, 
including the voices ofwomen politicians, social scientists, and health workers 
who help contribute to this story of creating a model of midwifery care in 
Canada. 
The strengths of this book are its inclusion of these diverse voices and its 
mix of practical, theoretical, and academic essays. The New Midwifwy is 
appropriate for birth activists, midwives, and those interested in the broader 
context of midwifery care. It will be particularly useful for those grappling with 
the legalization of midwives in their own communities. The book provides 
important insights, lessons, and potential models. Regrettably, it was written 
soon after regulation went into effect and the long-term successes and failures 
of legislation are still unknown. Those stories remain for others to tell. 
How to Avoid the Mommy Trap 
A Roadmap for Sharing Parenting and Making 
It Work 
Julie Shields 
Sterling, VA: Capital Books, 2003 
Reviewed by Diana L. Gustafson 
How toAvoid the Mommy T r a p  is hailed as "the essential guide for women who 
want to balance motherhood and life." Clearly written, cleverly packaged, and 
humorous at times, lawyer and mother Julie Shields offers a roadmap to shared 
parenting that includes practical strategies for recognizing and avoiding the 
mommy trap. According to Shields, a woman is stuck in the "mommy trap" 
when she takes on a disproportionately greater share of parenting and house- 
hold responsibilities with a disproportionately lesser share of leisure and 
personal time than her husband, and when she objects to this situation, believes 
it is unchangeable, and makes no plan for "getting unstuck" (14). 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 369 
Book Reviews 
The book draws on formal and informal interviews with 80 mostly 
suburban American couples aged 30 to 40 years in their first or second marriage. 
Most participants are educated -from high school to graduate school-and 
are well established in their careers. Based on her data, Shields classified 
couples as traditional (nurturer mothers and breadwinner fathers); egalitarian 
(parenting is shared); or transitional(a contentious middle ground where beliefs 
and values about parenting collide). Strategies for success are supplemented 
with professional resources and interviews with a range of family and child-care 
experts. Support for statistical claims and practical suggestions are drawn from 
sources as diverse as a 2001 Harlequin Romance e-survey about what women 
want, to studies by noted University of California at Berkeley sociologist Arlie 
Russell Hochschild. 
The book maps a staged plan for shared parenting, from courtship through 
to marriage, pregnancy, and new motherhood. Three composite case studies 
illustrate a variety of hazardous detours and productive routes: some as obvious 
as discussing the division of parenting responsibilities before baby arrives, and 
other more creative ways for women and their partners to negotiate positive 
change. Packaged for both the serious parenting journeyer and the casual 
tourist, there are Cosmo-type road signs (how to spot his gender ideology; a 
mommy trap diagnosis), a two-page resource ofbooks and websites to visit, and 
a chapter on national parenting and child-care legislation of particular interest 
to American readers. 
Unfortunately, this Dr. Phil-like self-help guide assumes that women are 
individually and collectively responsible for "getting stuck." According to 
Shields, the most important reason why "women collectively have not negoti- 
ated good deals for themselves . . . is low aspiration level[emphasis in original]" 
(51). Women are described as ineffective complainers who "gripe," "whine," 
and are "unable to stop grousing" (10) because of their "failure to understand 
the wide range of options available to modern parents" (15). wth disturbing 
regularity, these damning descriptors are juxtaposed with assertions about 
women's collusion with, and unquestioning acceptance of, gender stereotypes 
in the media and social and economic inequalities in the workplace and the 
home. According to Shields, a woman chooses between getting stuck or 
unstuck in the mommy trap. 
Feminists and other critical theorists agree that "choices spring from 
power, and those who have limited power have fewer choices" (Giroux 305). 
The uncomplicated, socially decontextudized understanding of women's 
choices advanced in this book is deceptively attractive because it is skillfully 
packaged to appeal to women whose justifiable "complaint" is inequality in 
parenting and household responsibilities. This roadmap may be useful for 
readers with a critical lens to separate the individual from the systemic, and the 
social and economic power to choose among flex-time, part-time work with 
reduced income, and full-time nannies. For women with fewer choices, 
however, this roadmap may reinforce the negative and persistent message that 
370 / Volume 8, Numbers 1,2 
Book Reviews 
getting stuck or failing to get unstuck is a mother's choice and a woman's 
personal failure. 
Reference 
Girow, H. A. 1997. "Rewriting the Discourse of Racial Identity: Towards a 
Pedagogy and Politics ofwhiteness." HarvardEducationalReview 67 (2): 
285-320. 
Abortion and Nation 
The Politics of Reproduction in Contemporary 
Ireland 
Lisa Smyth 
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005 
Reviewed by Maire Leane 
Abortion and Nation analyzes the ways in which abortion politics have been 
framed and reframed in Ireland over the past two decades. The discussions of 
abortion contained in three key daily newspapers, in parliamentary debates, and 
in the two governmental working-groups established on the topic provide the 
data sources on which Smyth's analysis is based. She argues convincingly that 
a hegemonic construction of Irish nationhood as essentially familial, Catholic, 
traditional, and heterosexual has shaped the nature of abortion debate in 
Ireland and has mitigated against the introduction of a right to reproductive 
choice. 
In chapters four and five, Smyth demonstrates how during the successful 
1983 campaign to introduce a constitutional ban on abortion, abortion was 
framed as a moral/religious issue with the anti-abortion stance constructed as 
representative of the traditional Catholic, familial ethos of the Irish nation. 
Within this frame, concerns for women's rights were marginalized while the 
rights of the foetus were strongly asserted. 
As Smyth's analysis in chapters six and seven reveals, however, the 1992 "X 
case," and the outpouring of rage and compassion it generated, forced a 
reappraisal of this anti-abortion stance. "X," a fourteen-year-old girl pregnant 
as a result ofrape, was prohibited by the Irish courts from travelling to England 
to procure an abortion. A subsequent Supreme Court decision permitted " X  
to leave the country on the grounds that she was suicidal and that there was a 
substantial risk to her life. Smyth argues that following the "X case" press 
coverage ofthe abortion issue constructed the State as repressive. Furthermore, 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering ( 3 71 


How to Avoid the Mommy Trap: A Roadmap for Sharing Parenting and Making It Work

Hewett, Heather

Talkin' Bout a Revolution: Building a Mothers' Movement in the Third Wave

Dunlop, Rishma

Editor's Notes 
Of Silence and Idolatry: The Poems of Ann Fisher-Wirth 
Let's not speak of the sorrow 
this child and her sister and brother 
will inherit; instead, listen to the story 
their mother tells them, how all the babies 
line up in the sky by the baby ladder, 
and slide down when they hear their future 
parents say, This one.. .This one.. .This one.. . 
How they are the chosen babies of the world. 
Ann Fisher-Wirth, "Devotions" 
I first met Ann Fisher-Wirth in July 2004 at the Poetry and Sexuality 
Conference at The University of Stirling, Scotland. The poetry reading she 
gave at the conference included poems from her first book Blue Window; it was 
a beautifully eloquent performance. In her poems, Fisher-Wirth tangled the 
everyday offamily, motherhood, and the natural world with sexuality and erotic 
love in a unique lyric voice. I remember thinking as I heard her read, that this 
was apoetwith a courageous, sensualvoice, whose workwas rooted in the body. 
In this issue of Folio, I am pleased to feature a selection of Ann Fisher- 
Wirth's poems that convey a visceral, deeply embodied perception of mother- 
hood, a physical, psychic landscape in which the wounds of infant death, the 
dissolution of a marriage, the agonies of loss and guilt for the mother whose 
children are moved to another state by their father, are narrative threads 
juxtaposed against the protective fierceness of a mother's love. 
332 1 Volume 8, Numbers 1,2 
In the opening poem "In Crescent," we are introduced to the mother's 
body: 
The bloodwall thickens 
and everyone I have loved 
begins to ripen within my body. 
And so inch forward toward that 
teeming bed 
where we all lie down together. 
In "Moth," the young woman, "the girl I once was," grieves for her dead 
newborn daughter, breast milk letting down over her new white dress: 
O h  I was death's girl, 
sure to poison anything I loved, 
any sweet cock or baby that came near me. 
In "Devotions," the narrator describes the devastations of alife ofpoverty: 
"It's 1973. They're so poor/it's a crisis when she breaks a jar of honey . . . Let's 
just say/ poverty and terror can break a marriage." 
Throughout these poems, there is a sense of rawness, the narrator 
confessing the intense physicdity of her mothering, as in "Kisses:" "Kisses like 
birth fluid, floating them, surrounding them, until the day they die. No, 
confess. She wants her kiss-shaped seal still to be glowing at the end ofeternity." 
The Trinket Poems, were composed after Fisher-Wirth acted as Trinket 
Dugan in a production o f  The Mutilated," aTennessee Williams play. Fisher- 
Wirth takes us deep inside the character of Trinket, offering us provocative 
perceptions of the nature of maternal desire. The poem "Blesser" plays on the 
meaning of the French word, problematizing the word which means "to 
wound" in French. Fisher-Wirth contemplates blesseralongside the English "to 
bless." For Fisher-Wirth's narrator, for the reader, there are no easy answers: 
Oh  I know 
it's false etymology but think about it: doesn't what 
brings you to your knees gut-punched, or makes you 
sit on the toilet as your lover lies sleeping 
and scratch bright welts along your thighs 
with the paring knife, the fingernail scissors, 
or drops you fetal to the forest floor because you've 
run so far away from home, sobbing mother, father, 
he? medoesn ' t  the day you stand in the empty house 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 333 
of the family you destroyed, sent your children 
like dandelion seedpods spinning into the golden 
canyons of grief far beyond their small as yet imaginings- 
doesn't even this somehow bless them, bless you? 
In the powerful closing prose narrative, "Of Silence and Idolatry," Fisher- 
Wirth uses a double-voiced technique that exposes the power struggles 
between ex-spouses and the mother's decision not to place her children in a 
court battle. The contrast between the aims of shared custody, the powerless- 
ness ofthe mother who loses the daily presence ofher children in her home, and 
the incapacity oflegal systems to serve familial needs are keenly conveyed. The  
"idolatry" of this poetic prose is contained in the mother's intense love for her 
children: "This is my idolatry. I know every inch of their bodies. Which ones 
vomit easily, which one fights it.. . . I know my children the way you know your 
breath, your voice, the water in your eyes." 
As we read Fisher-Wirth's work in this issue on mothering and feminism, 
- 
the lawyer's words remembered by the narrator are a haunting reminder of the 
legal struggles of mothers and a long history ofuntenable choices: "Remember 
the day the lawyer said, 'Once a woman falls off the pedestal in Virginia, she's 
in the mud?' Remember how happy she sounded, even though you'd heard she 
was a feminist and were planning to hire her?" 
What is most impressive about Ann Fisher-Wirth's work in these poems 
is the voice that manages to convey vividly the irreconcilable subject position 
of the mother who leaves her children, "not meaning to leave them." The 
question 'Why did you do it?" is answered by the narrator's conception of the 
lover who becomes the "one love strong as birth." 
As I write this introduction to Ann Fisher-Wirth's poems, I have just 
returned from meeting her once again in July 2006, in Stirling, Scotland at the 
Poetry and Politics Conference. As I listened to Ann read poems from her new 
book, Five Terraces, I knew this was a poet highly attuned to the world, full of 
authenticity, surprise, intellect, passion, grace and courage. Her work extends 
our understandings of the immense complexities of the roles ofwife, mother, 
lover, poet, whiie acknowledging a terrible beauty in the luminous particulars 
of human living. 
--Rishma Dunlop 
334 1 Volume 8, Numbers 1,2 


Editor's Notes

Satterfield, Jane

Book Reviews 
In the Middle of Everything 
Memoirs of Motherhood 
Michelle Herman 
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005 
Reviewed by Jane Satterfield 
In her 1994 book, Women Writing Childbirth: Modern Discourses about Mother- 
hood, Tess Cosslett showed how deeply embedded cultural assumptions shape 
women's attitudes toward mothering. When women compose childbirth - 
stories-in person or in print--as narrators they are always "making use of, but 
also questioning existing ideologies." Childbirth is both a turning point and a 
narrative crisis that "destroys, confirms or creates a woman's sense of identity." 
This narrative crisis-and the mother's subsequent recreation of identity- 
provides a focal point for Michelle Herman's In the Middle of Everything: 
Memoirs of Motherhood. 
Awriter and professor, Herman's memoir begins aptly, not with birth, but 
in the middle of things-the end of an ordinary, chaotic day in the Midwestern 
home she shares with her painter husband ("the only person I ever lived with, 
other than my parents, and now our daughter"). Herman and her daughter 
Grace, then eight, share a familiar mother-and-child bedtime scene: the child 
singing Britney Spears lyrics, talking about her first crush, asking her mother 
about the nature of love. This simple appeal takes Herman back to her past- 
her Brooklyn childhood ofthe 1950s and '60s, a romantic life of dating, and her 
passionate pursuit of an artistic vocation-vividly recreated in careful detail to 
explore the particular confluence of place and time that shapes this mother's 
and her generation's identity. 
An accomplished storyteller, Herman's multilayered narrative moves back 
and forth in time from early adolescence, when her mother suffered a temporary 
but debilitating depression, to her own imperfect present. Herman's efforts to 
mother are met with unexpected challenges-her daughter's hunger strike at 
three months and a near-breakdown triggered by "separation/individuation 
issues" at age six. Having succeeded-having "managed to completely fulfill my 
daughtern-Herman confronts the difficult truth that it might not be so clear 
whose needs she has satisfied. 
At the centre of In the Middle of Everything: Memoirs of Motherhood is 
Herman's voice-witty, insistently inquisitive, and deeply engaged in daily life. 
As she reflects on the joys of teaching, the enduring value of friendships, the 
dynamic evolution of mother and child, and her own misguided assumptions 
about every aspect of life, Herman's narrative affirms her conviction that love 
''. improves you." She suggests that the problems associated with motherhood 
are, in fact, "problems of humanhood: the experience of being alive and joyful, 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 365 
Book Reviews 
or suffering, or in doubt or in a cloud of gloom or worry, or living through a 
moment of quiet, perfect pleasure." 
From Motherhood to Mothering 
The Legacy of Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born 
Andrea O'Reilly, ed. 
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004 
Reviewed by Monika Lee 
This book is a thought-provoking array of disparate though wide-ranging 
essays, some of which are only tangentially connected to Adrienne Rich's Of 
Woman Born: Motherhoodas Experience andInstitution (1976). The strength of 
the volume, however, lies in the diversity of perspectives and disciplines 
addressed: sociology, law, feminist theory, literary criticism, sexual politics, 
poststructuralist theory, and autobiography are all brought to bear on the 
discussion. Unfortunately, this reader was often left wishing for more thematic 
consistency or focus on the subject ofthe collection. The volume's introduction, 
for instance, might have established some of the lines of Rich's book's huge 
influence on culture and critical thought. Nonetheless, O'Reilly's introduction 
is readable and provides a comprehensive overview of the terminology of 
motherhood/mothering that has emerged from the legacy of Adrienne Rich's 
"ovarian" text. Insofar as O'Reilly documents her emotional and visceral 
response to Of Woman Born, the introduction is quite compelling; her reactions 
of outrage and awakening are clearly more than individual responses, for they 
have arisen in many of Rich's readers. O'Reilly also provides the requisite 
preview of the essays which constitute the rest of the book. 
Even essays little concerned with Adrienne Rich are well worth reading. 
Margaret Morganroth Gullette's, "The Broken Shovel: Looking Back at 
Postmaternity at CO-Parenting," has little overt connection to Rich, but is a 
well-written and moving retrospective account of feminist CO-parenting. 
Similarly, Maria-Barbara Watson-Franke's essay stands out as nuanced and 
provocative, although it too treats Of Woman Born only tangentially. Watson- 
Franke provides an anthropological overview of the few extant matrilineal 
societies in the world today and the ways in which these societies are empow- 
ering of mothering. 
The collection is divided into three parts with part one, "Motherhood as 
Institution: Maternal Power and Maternal Outrage," focusing on the political 
implications of state reproductive control. Diana Ginn's essay offers a persua- 
sive analysis of connections between Rich's ideas and Canadian court decisions 
366 1 Volume 8, Numbers 1,2 


In the Middle of Everything: Memoirs of Motherhood

Lee, Monika

Book Reviews 
or suffering, or in doubt or in a cloud of gloom or worry, or living through a 
moment of quiet, perfect pleasure." 
From Motherhood to Mothering 
The Legacy of Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born 
Andrea O'Reilly, ed. 
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004 
Reviewed by Monika Lee 
This book is a thought-provoking array of disparate though wide-ranging 
essays, some of which are only tangentially connected to Adrienne Rich's Of 
Woman Born: Motherhoodas Experience andInstitution (1976). The strength of 
the volume, however, lies in the diversity of perspectives and disciplines 
addressed: sociology, law, feminist theory, literary criticism, sexual politics, 
poststructuralist theory, and autobiography are all brought to bear on the 
discussion. Unfortunately, this reader was often left wishing for more thematic 
consistency or focus on the subject ofthe collection. The volume's introduction, 
for instance, might have established some of the lines of Rich's book's huge 
influence on culture and critical thought. Nonetheless, O'Reilly's introduction 
is readable and provides a comprehensive overview of the terminology of 
motherhood/mothering that has emerged from the legacy of Adrienne Rich's 
"ovarian" text. Insofar as O'Reilly documents her emotional and visceral 
response to Of Woman Born, the introduction is quite compelling; her reactions 
of outrage and awakening are clearly more than individual responses, for they 
have arisen in many of Rich's readers. O'Reilly also provides the requisite 
preview of the essays which constitute the rest of the book. 
Even essays little concerned with Adrienne Rich are well worth reading. 
Margaret Morganroth Gullette's, "The Broken Shovel: Looking Back at 
Postmaternity at CO-Parenting," has little overt connection to Rich, but is a 
well-written and moving retrospective account of feminist CO-parenting. 
Similarly, Maria-Barbara Watson-Franke's essay stands out as nuanced and 
provocative, although it too treats Of Woman Born only tangentially. Watson- 
Franke provides an anthropological overview of the few extant matrilineal 
societies in the world today and the ways in which these societies are empow- 
ering of mothering. 
The collection is divided into three parts with part one, "Motherhood as 
Institution: Maternal Power and Maternal Outrage," focusing on the political 
implications of state reproductive control. Diana Ginn's essay offers a persua- 
sive analysis of connections between Rich's ideas and Canadian court decisions 
366 1 Volume 8, Numbers 1,2 
Book Reviews 
in 1997 and 1999 which help to protect women from the institutionalized 
patriarchal constraints ofcultural mother-blame. Sarah E. Stevens critiques the 
dangerous schism between public and private that, in China, has reinforced 
patriarchy at the expense of maternal power. Emily Jeremiah's essay on Toni 
Morrison's Beloved considers both the advantages and the limitations of 
Adrienne Rich's thinking in relation to the racial and violent instances of 
mothering depicted in Toni Morrison's novel about child murder. 
Part two, "Mothering as Experience: Empowerment and Resistance," 
takes up the bulk of the volume with seven essays, and draws attention to the 
many ways in which Of Woman Born might empower mothers. Dannabang 
Kuwabong's feminist and matrilineal reading ofMojica's play, Princess Pocahontas 
and the Blue Spots, provides a valuable corrective to Rich's focus on European 
patriarchal constructions of history, but it does so with occasionally distracting 
stylistic and grammatical errors which more rigorous editing could easily have 
eliminated. Fiona Green's essay on "Feminist Mothers" presents interesting 
anecdotal evidence of patterns of feminist mothering, albeit with some intel- 
lectually woolly identifications of patriarchy with every other form of social 
injustice. Karin Voth Harman's "Immortality and Morality in Contemporary 
Reworkings of the DemetedPersephone Myth" examines the explosion in 
literature dealing with the mythic motheddaughter pair as a collective response 
to Rich's cry for the unwritten stories of mothers and daughters. Editor 
O'Reilly's own constructive essay on "Mothering against Motherhood" draws 
our attention to Rich's unique role as the theorist of an integral connection 
between feminist child rearing and the emancipation of mothers and, by 
building on Rich's argument, proposes actual strategies for achieving better 
results than mothers have effected in the past. The best discussion in this 
section is Kate McCullough's "Motherhood outside Institutionalized Hetero- 
sexuality"; it is well researched and well organized, and it integrates Rich's work 
throughout its own argument that resistance to institutional motherhood is "a 
work-in-progress." The specific question of the extent and nature of Rich's 
influence is convincingly addressed here. 
Part three, "Narrating Maternity: Writing as Mother," is the strongest 
section of the book with three of its best essays: D'Arcy Randall's reading of Of 
Woman Born as a text of literary criticism, Jeanette E. Riley's fine overview of 
Rich's poetry, and Ann Keniston's theoretical analysis of the authenticity and 
candour in the "prose articulation of a lyric impulse" (233) in Of Woman Born. 
Riley's "A 'Sense of Drift': Adrienne Rich's Emergence from Mother to Poet" 
is a model of rigour and thoroughness with respect to Rich's actual historical 
impact and provides an excellent summary of Rich's poetic development while 
integrating Of Woman Born into the discussion. Keniston in "Beginning with 
'1': The Legacy of Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born" picks up Rich's and 
O'Reilly's autobiographical threads to analyze the element of memoir in Rich's 
text. Keniston's is one of the best essays in the collection, and its conscientious 
reading of Rich, through balanced and sophisticated treatments of feminism, 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 367 
Book Reviews 
autobiography and theory, is most welcome and, because it raises questions for 
further consideration, such as feminism's own essentidzing tendencies, 
Keniston's essay is a suitable finale to a comprehensive volume. 
The New Midwifery 
Reflections on Renaissance and Regulation 
Farah M. Shroff, ed. 
Toronto: Women's Press, 1997 
Reviewed by Jan E. Thomas 
For generations, Canadian midwives have assisted women during pregnancy 
and birth; only recently, however, have they done so with state recognition. The 
essays included in The New Midw* y: ReJIections on Renaissance andReguZation 
discuss the process of legislating midwives in Canada and the implications of 
state regulation for midwives and mothers. 
The first section of the bookintroduces issues of diversity and debate. One 
key concern is the newly created divisions between midwives. Cecilia Benoit's 
essay on professionalizing midwifery suggests that legislation has created three 
key points of contention within the midwifery community: midwifery training, 
regulation ofpractice, and organization ofwork. While midwives gained much 
by becoming autonomous professionals, they have also had to compromise 
some ofthe freedoms that went alongwith being independent ofthe health care 
system. Several essays draw attention to these issues and concerns. 
The essays in the first section demonstrate how regulations do not affect 
all groups equally. Pat Israel's essay on mothers with disabilities provides a 
succinct and practical summary of specific issues that affect this group of 
women. An essay by an Aboriginal midwife illustrates the unique blending of 
mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of birth and healing that is 
part of her culture. Other essays explore how legislation might impact immi- 
grant women and midwives from the global South countries who live with the 
legacy of colonization, racism, and oppression. 
The second section focuses on state regulation in six provinces with 
legislation in place by 1997. While essays concentrate on specific provinces, 
many common themes emerge. First, the importance of state support for 
midwifery (including funding) is made very clear. State support confers 
legitimacy on the profession and provides midwives with a place in the 
mainstream medical system. The celebration of state recognition, however, is 
tempered with concerns about the limitations of regulations. Many of these 
issues are raised in the first section and further illuminated by the case studies 
in the second section. 
368 1 Volume 8, Numbers 1,2 


From Motherhood to Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich's "Of Woman Born"

Fisher-Wirth, Ann

At McClure's Beach, Point Reyes 
National Seashore, California 
I would ask my family 
Wait for a foggy afternoon, late May, 
after a rainy winter so that all 
the wildflowers are blooming on the headland. 
Wait for honey of lupine. It will rise 
around you, encircle you, from vast golden bushes 
as you take the crooked trail 
down from the parking lot. Descend 
earth's cleft, sweet winding declivity 
where California poppies lift up their 
chalices, citrine and butterscotch, 
and phlox blows in the wisps of fog, every 
color of white and like the memory 
of pain, and like first dawn, and lavender. 
Where goldfinches, nubbins of sunlight, 
flit through the canyon. Walk one by one 
or in small clusters, carrying babies, 
children holding your hands-with your eyes, 
your oval skulls, your prodigious memories 
or skills with the fingers. Your skirts or shirts 
will flirt with the wind, and small brown rabbits 
will run in and out, you'll see their ears first, 
nested in the grasses, then the bob 
of fleeting hindquarters. 
Now come to the sand, 
the mussel shells, broken or open, iridescent, 
color of crows' wings in flight 
or purple martins, and the bullwhips 
of sea kelp, some like frizzy-headed voodoo 
poppets, some like long hollow brown or bleached 
phalluses. The X X birdprints running 
Journal oftbe Associationfor Research on Mothering / 345 
Ann Fisher- Wlrth 
across the scalloped sand will leave a trail of stars, 
look at the black oystercatcher, the scamp 
with the long red beak, it's whizzing along 
in its courtship dance. Look at the fog, 
above you now on the headland, and know how much 
I love the fog. Don't cry, my best beloveds, 
it's time to scatter me back now. I've wanted this 
all my life. Look at the cormorants, 
the gulls, the elegant scythed whimbrel, 
do you hear its quiquiquiquiqui 
rising above the eternal Ujjayi breath, 
the roar and silence and seethe and whisper, 
the immeasurable insweep and release of ocean. 
346 / Volume 8, Numbers 1,2 


At McClure's Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore, California

DiQuinzio, Patrice

The Politics of the Mothers' Movement in the United States: Possibilities and Pitfalls