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

Church, Kathryn

Church, Lorraine

English

Needles and Pins: Dialogue on a Mother/Daughter Journey

Nemzoff, Ruth

Book Reviews 
This book is of special interest to any parent of a child with PDD, OCD, 
autism, or other "special needs," especially neurological needs. I could use A 
Slant of Sun in classes that address language acquisition, speech therapy, or the 
power of literacy. Potential readers include anyone interested in fine writing 
about one woman's discovery of her deepest sources of strength. A Slant @un 
was a finalist for a National Book Award (U.S.) in 1998. 
Before Deportation 
Feiner, Herta. 
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999. 
Reviewed by Ruth Nemzoff 
Before Deportation by Herta Feiner contains eighty-five pages of letters from a 
German-Jewish mother living in Berlin to her half-Aryan daughters at board- 
ing school in Gland, Switzerland. The letters cover the period January 1939 to 
December 1942. Amidst the trivia of daily concerns and the usual parental 
affectionate expression of love is a powerful description of pre-deportation 
Nazi-Germany, with its insidious erasure of freedoms and rights for Jews in 
Germany. The Nazi machinery left few aspects oflife untouched. Their gradual 
encroachment in each sphere oflife occurred in small increments, allowing the 
Jews to adapt to the changes. They manipulated this human capacity for 
adaptation and ensnared the Jews in their trap. 
W e  learn, for example, that at first the Nazi government allowed the flow 
of mail; then they required a special stamp; next they limited the length of the 
letters; subsequently they limited the number of letters that Jews could send. 
Finally, they stopped mail delivery altogether. We learn that slowly the Jewish 
schools were diminished, first by forced moves to smaller quarters, then by staff 
reductions and, in time, by shortened school hours. 
At first the spouses or parents of Aryans were protected. Finally, no one 
was protected. We see the effectiveness ofthe gradually tightening noose when 
this loving mother actually asks her daughters to return to Germany in the belief 
that their Aryan status could protect both mother and daughters. 
Although this book is not as powerful or emotionally wrenching as Elie 
Weisel's Night, its very ordinariness demonstrates the thorough and methodi- 
cal way the Nazis were able to lure the Jews to their deaths. ?'his book helps 
answer the question, "Why didn't the Jews see what was happening?" 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 201 


Before Deportation

Moore, Sylvia

Book Reviews 
One universal trend is the undermining of traditional, multigenerational 
family structures by urbanization, economic shifts, and emigration. A second 
positive trend is an increased regard for individual rights and democratic values. 
In all interviewed families, elders tell of the profound changes they have 
witnessed during their lifetimes and of their accompanying fears and hopes. 
At the same time, the subsequent generations are aware ofwhat they have 
lost and gained. One important improvement named by women and men 
(especially younger men) alike is the increasing equality of women and men 
within and outside the family. At the same time, more than one fourth of 
households worldwide are headed by women (in some nations 30 to 40 
percent)-due to the emigration of men in search ofwork, divorce, widowhood, 
or abandonment. 
Other universal problems that will be faced in the future include the loss 
of natural resources, physical and mental health concerns, especially alcohol 
and substance abuse, women's reproductive health and sex education, domestic 
violence, and HIV/AIDS. 
While showing that traditional family structures are dissolving, Huston 
also demonstrates that such a constricted concept of the family is no longer 
adequate. Instead, she shows that families come in all shapes and sizes and she 
broadens the concept of family to include non-biological relations (such as 
street children protecting each other or groups ofprostitutes living together and 
caring for one another's children). In creating new structures of support, these 
non-traditional families are adapting to the challenges of the modern world. 
At the same time, conservative notion of the "traditional" family is still 
being forced upon individuals in all parts of the world. As Huston emphasizes, 
this is thewrong approach: ifour main concern is childrens'well-being, we need 
to support these newly evolving types of families. Children will be protected 
best by adults who love and care for them, regardless of their marital status, 
gender, sexual orientation, or biological relationship. 
Although I would have liked her to include a European country-Europe 
is not exempt from the difficulties faced by the rest of the world-Huston's 
book elucidates the urgent need for reform and her demands are universal. 
Two for the Summit: 
M y  Daughter, the Mountains, and Me. 
Norman, Geoffrey. 
Toronto: Penguin, 2000. 
Reviewed by Sylvia Moore 
"I had followed my daughter to the top, which was not the way I had expected 
Journal oftbe Association for Research on Mothering ( 191 
Book Reviews 
it to be or the way that it had always been. But I surely wouldn't have made it 
any other way. Or  had it any other way, either." 
Geoffrey Norman takes the reader on a spiritual and physical struggle up 
Aconcagua, one of the highest mountain peaks in the world. He  describes the 
events leading up to this mid-life adventure (he has just turned SO), takes us 
back over a series of glimpses of his life as a father, and then carries us up the 
mountain as ifwe are watching though a camera mounted on his shoulder. His 
daughter walks alongside him, rising to the challenge of the climb while 
Norman struggles, realizing at some point that he, in fact, may not make the 
summit. His daughter may succeed where he might fail, and at that moment 
she is no longer his little girl. The child becomes the leader, challenging the 
parent to succeed. 
The mountain is a metaphor for parenting - a laborious and joyous 
experience that changes over time. When he realizes that he may not make the 
summit, Norman decides to talk to his daughter: "The kind of talk that you have 
a lot, but never get used to having, I suppose, when you are a dad. The kind 
where you say things that have to be said but that you wish you didn't have to 
talkabout. I decided, as I had many times, to put the talkoffas long as possible." 
I waited for Norman to share his thoughts on parenting and middle age. 
In fact, he put offthe talk, both with his daughter and with the reader. I waited 
to read about his deep feelings for his daughter but he never articulated them. 
Nonetheless, I believe Norman descended the mountain a changed man, 
changed in spirit and in his connection to his daughter. I wanted Norman to 
describe these changes. Unfortunately, it is as if Norman's whole story has not 
been told. 
The Big Rumpus: 
A Mother's Tale from the Trenches 
Halliday, Ayun. 
Seattle: Seal Press, 2002. 
Reviewed by Patricia R. Payette 
Ayun Halliday has been called a new generation's urban Erma Bombeck. 
Writing from her family's tiny Brooklyn apartment, Halliday demonstrates a 
Bombeckesque dry humour for reporting the absurd and hilarious everyday 
details of raising children. The Big Rumpus grew out of Halliday's pen-and-ink 
photocopied 'zine called the East Village Inky that she describes as "an 
anticorporate, consciousness-raising, feminist call to arms," actually a cleverly 
disguised collection ofamusingrants, raves, andlovingly-drawn cartoons about 
the minute details of her family life and their colourful adventures in the East 
Village. 
192 / Volume 5, Number 2 


Two for the Summit: My Daughter, the Mountains, and Me

Castle, Joyce B.

Woloshyn, Vera

Motherhood and Academia: Learning from Our Lived Experience

Contributor Notes

Swanson, Debra H.

Johnston, Deirdre D.

Mothering in the Ivy Tower: Interviews with Academic Mothers

Scott, Jill

Book Reviews 
nancy and the maternal figure, diverse representations of female subjectivity, 
and social conflicts over reproduction. 
The more than 200 photographs in the book are drawn primarilyfrom art, 
advertising, family albums, medical textbooks, and public policy material in the 
United States since World War 11. While there already are numerous analyses 
of obstetrical representations of pregnancy, women, and the fetus, Pregnant 
Pictures manages to offer a fresh reading of medical images by suggesting 
disturbing eugenicist connotations. Matthews and Wexler move onto less 
traveled terrain in their analyses of maternity clothing advertisements, their 
discussion of humour, athleticism, and eroticism in family snapshots of 
pregnancy, and in their argument about the simultaneous desire for and anxiety 
about the pregnant figure in popular media. Readers of this Journal will be 
interested particularly in their discussions ofthe instrumental uses ofpregnancy 
and motherhood in public policy, visual representations of single mothers and 
working mothers, and modernist visual conventions of desexualized mother- 
hood. 
In the social and historical context in which pregnancy so often is equated 
with producing and nurturing fetuses, reclaiming and embracing images of 
women during pregnancy is important cultural and political work. Yet, the 
authors manage to avoid fetishizing their subject, acknowledging that "many 
a pregnant woman already feels enough like a spectacle and would just as soon 
not be further featured in the feminine visual position ofto-be-looked-at-ness" 
(14-15). The book is a welcome visual companion to the growing number of 
text- and narrative-based analyses of the politics of reproduction and of the 
diverse subject positions of women in pregnancy and motherhood. Pregnant 
Pictures will be appreciated by researchers, students, and others interested in 
motherhood, reproduction, the life cycle, gender, visual studies, and the body. 
Birth Passages: 
Maternity and Nostalgia, Antiquity to 
Shakespeare 
Krier, Theresa M. 
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. 
Reviewed by Jill Scott 
In Birth Passages, Theresa Krier writes against the grain of much contempo- 
rary critical analysis of the role of mothers and mothering in literature. 
Feminist psychoanalysis in particular has given voice to a larger cultural 
obsession with nostalgia for the lost mother, which in turn manifests itself as 
an insatiable desire for the return to the bliss of maternal, pre-oedipal one- 
212 / Volume S, Number l 
Book Reviews 
ness. This bliss, argues Krier, is a false one, and the predominance of this 
cultural myth necessitates a historical re-examination beginning in the cradle 
of Western civilization with antiquity's own mothers. Krier extends her 
argument in thematically linked chapters right through the Middle Ages to 
Elizabethan England (including works from Lucretius, Chaucer, Spencer, 
and Shakespeare). Through her insightful and subtle readings of central 
canonical texts from a broad range of periods and genres, she allows her 
authors to argue her points for her: namely that there are alternative views on 
motherhood. Rather than privileging the prenatal mother-child bond to the 
detriment of all subsequent stages of infant and childhood development, 
Krier demonstrates that mother and child engage in complex negotiations of 
distance and proximity. 
Krier cites Luce Irigaray as her most potent inspiration and her readings 
of this theorist's work are both illuminating and challenging. As part of her 
sophisticated theoretical apparatus, Krier takes the unconventional approach of 
weaving together the French and British traditions of psychoanalysis, schools 
of thought which have for the most part been considered separate and even 
antagonistic intellectual pursuits. The dialogue that she instigates among 
Klein, Winnicott and Irigaray brings new insight to the lesser known contri- 
butions of British psychoanalysis. 
Krier is clearly at her best when tackling Shakespeare. The concluding 
chapter on The Winter's Tale contains fire, wit, and courage as the author brings 
her arguments to a theatrical climax with her reading of one of Shakespeare's 
most controversial and challenging dramas. She admits that the play was the 
inspiration for this book and is at her scholarly best in her critique of it. Here, 
she takes careful aim at the concept of the "good enough mother and succeeds 
in skillfdly dispelling the myth of the "bad mother" syndrome. One of the 
undeniable strengths of h e r ' s  work, which contributes to her convincing 
argument, is the time and space she allots to extended literary interpretations. 
She avoids quoting too many literary examples to support her sustained critique 
of a central axis of psychoanalytic theory, and instead has the patience to coax 
her thesis out of each text in lengthy and thoughtful analysis. 
There are few flaws in Krier's theoretical and literary musings, however her 
arguments and her prose are occasionally more dense and hermetic than this 
reader would have liked. At times, I felt I almost had lost the thread ofthe subtle 
web she attempts to weave. Though I always found my way again, a few more 
signposts would have clarified where I was on her clever map. Reading Krier's 
serious and intellectually engaging tome while awaiting the birth of my own 
second child, I constantlywas reminded and surprised by the richness that the 
opportunity of motherhood unveils. Her erudition and astuteness as a literary 
scholar and as a theoretician are clearly established in Birth Passages. Mostly, 
however, we are left convinced by Krier's sincere and infectious passion and 
enthusiasm for her deserving topic. 
Journal oftbe Association for Research on Mothering / 213 


Birth Passages: Maternity and Nostalgia, Antiquity to Shakespeare

Bischoping, Kathy

The Best You Can Expect When You’re Expecting... and Beyond: A Review of Contract Language for Mothers in the Canadian Academy

Norman, Renee

Renee Norman 
Confessions of an Aging Mother 
earlier the youngest crawled into bed beside me 
curling up 
patiently waiting: have you slept enough? 
can i turn on the T V  in your room? 
i dreamt disrupted scenes 
of my previous day 
while cartoon characters shouted 
across the screen 
a small warm body 
curved itself back into mine 
leg to leg 
an aging mother 
i need that extra half-sleep 
would not trade the T V  background 
for any silence 
i need the reminders of flesh 
that once pulsed inside mine 
feet kicking from the inside out 
62 Volume 5, Number 2 


Confessions of an Aging Mother

Chalal, Taina

Taina Chalal 
Mother uses spellcheck 
become becoming shall be a spinner a speller a sylph a shrew a scold 
a nag a norn a crone a fate a wyrd weird weirdwyrd 
weirdward 
weirdword 
a word urd urth earth 
a she-bear, Skadi 
rising with the steam 
deep from the shadowy grey green 
a mare, laughing, 
streaking through the skies 
a scorpion 
making love to Orion. 
76 / Volume 5, Number 2 


Mother uses spellcheck