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

Galupo, M. Paz

Ayers, Jean F.

English

Negotiating the Maternal and Sexual Breast: Narratives of Breastfeeding Mothers

Elbert, Monika

Persephone's Return: Communing with the Spirit-Daughter in Morrison and Allende

Hoogland, Cornelia

Cornelia Hoowland 
Especially Oh, especially darling 
The girl is in bed with her mother. 
Their flannelette nighties leap round their waists 
and they make laughing sounds 
that like leftover coloured heat in a glass kiln 
there are no words for. Glee, maybe, or joy. 
The bed's blue comforter is fat as a cloud. 
Stay with the image of cloth fluttering. A cloud 
shifting past the sun travelling the length of the ravine 
the mother knows lurks outside 
like the separation just ahead. 
The mother leaving, the daughter staying. 
Mountains, prairie, the Great Lakes separating them, 
the years of bawling into the black 0 of the telephone. 
Nestled here on Miller Avenue 
in the last days as well as the 
first egg-bursts into the fallopian current 
deep in the girl's body, 
the mother--before she can haul them back-says 
Oh darling girl. Three good words, 
the one thing a mother can promise her daughter, 
to hold herprecious. And then she says, 
if you love this you're going to love sex. 
What has the daughter done with those words? 
Ask her. But the mother- 
through the years of bad sex and no sex-clings 
to that romp and her self-mothering 
especially Oh, especially darling. 
Journal ofthe Association f i r  Research on Mothering 1 87 


Especially Oh, especially darling

Norman, Renee

Renee Norman 
Making Beds of Poetry 
(and Lying in the Words) 
I'm just going upstairs to write poetry and make beds. 
I don't know how to 
make beds 
out of fabric springboard stuffing 
or write poetry 
out of gossamer webbed lace 
The sheets are wrinkled 
in the stanzas 
blood-stained with dots of fearfulness 
I don't want to change them 
but I can't seem to pull them up over 
images of uselessness 
I don't mind picking up the nightclothes 
and tossing them into the dirty laundry 
but 
it's hard to display them 
between the rhythm of the words 
everyone is always annoyed 
when I return 
the special toys and tempo 
to the wrong person 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering ( 17 
Renee Norman 
Does everyone smooth the bedcovers 
like this 
wondering where the lines came from 
staring 
at the quilt 
on the page 
pleased with restored order 
which lasts and stays static 
for about two minutes 
Am I just fooling myself 
into believing that I 
need to make the beds of words 
or could 
I think I should have washed the sheets 
and written letters home 
18 1 Volume 4, Number 2 


Making Beds of Poetry (and Lying in the Words)

Harde, Roxanne

"What Was Your Living Mother's Mind": Motherhood as Intellectual Enterprise in Mother's Legacy Books

Shaw, Denise R.

A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle

Kuwabong, Dannabang

"Una Nacion No Sera Conquistada" When the Women Take Up Their Medicine: Venerating the Native Mother through Malinche in Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots

Zeck, Jeanne-Marie

Book Reviews 
financially-than their previous endeavours. 
Albert's educational philosophy is based on ideas developed initially by 
Jean Jacques Rousseau and imported into North American educational think- 
ing by John Dewey. Rousseau argued that, given a proper environment, the 
"noble savagen in a child will blossom into a successful and accomplished 
person. He  felt that formal schooling is detrimental to the blossoming process, 
and that one learns better by "doingn rather than studying. Apparently, 
Rousseau's concern for the welfare of children was more theoretical than 
practical: he abandoned all five ofhis own children to orphanages. Albert takes 
the opposite approach by sacrificing his entrepreneurial career for the sake of 
his children's development. 
The book is well written and a pleasure to read. It includes a rich 
bibliography, complete with the author's annotations on many of the sources. 
Its language is sophisticated, dear, and succinct. For the reader who agreeswith 
Albert and Rousseau's thinking, this book will prove satisfying. For the 
opponent, there is much "meat" in which to sink one's intellectual teeth. 
Transformative Motherhood: 
On Giving and Getting in a ConsumerCulture 
Linda L. Layne, ed. 
New York: New York University Press, 1999 
Reviewed by Jeanne-Marie Zeck 
TranJfomative Motherhood, a collection of anthropological essays, is a valuable 
book for parents and educators. Linda Layne and her contributors present 
research on mothers and children who have been marginalized in American 
culture and, until recently, neglected by anthropologists. In this collection, the 
authors examine the experiences of adoptive mothers, birth mothers, and their 
children; surrogate mothers; foster mothers; and mothers of physically and 
mentally handicapped children. Layne herself presents research on women 
who have lost children through miscarriage, stillbirth, and death in infancy. 
What unites these essays is an examination of the rhetoric of gift giving and 
receiving. Each author analyzes how those in her particular research group use 
gift terminologyto explain their experiences, to define themselves, and to grant 
full humanity to children who often are dismissed by a culture that focuses on 
physical "perfection." 
Adrienne Rich's 1976 history of childbirth in America, Of Woman Born, 
was the first academic study to include a mother's personal account of care 
giving. In the tradition created by Rich, the anthropologists in Layne's book 
searnlessly incorporate their own experiences of mothering into their research. 
208 1 Volume 4, Number 1 
Book Reviews 
This assertion of personal maternal experience as a form of expertise is a 
significant feminist claim. Throughout Tranfoomative Motherhood, the au- 
thors build on one another's research and often present subtle similarities and 
differences. The result is a cohesive collection that reflects the contributors' 
mutual respect. 
American consumer culture, these authors believe, frequently focuses 
on superficial physical perfection. Only a woman who manufactures a perfect 
product (a physically and mentally "perfectn child) is considered a real mother. 
In opposition to such social prejudices, the authors in this volume assert the 
profound spiritual value of the gifts and lessons mothers give and receive 
through their experiences as life givers and caretakers. As Gail Landsman notes 
in her essay, "Mothers of chiidrenwith disabilities talkabout reassessingvalues, 
realizing true priorities, putting things in perspective, and above all, being less 
judgmental of others. The child's g i i  of knowledge of unconditional love 
provides mothers a vocabulary with which to develop a critique of consumer 
culture " (1 5 9). 
Mothers also use the rhetoric of gift giving to discuss their contributions 
to society. For example, Danielle F. Wozniak discusses the role of foster 
mothers: "Through transformative relationships with children, women healed 
a portion of their community and contributed to overall social reform. Through 
mothering work, women saw themselves as family makers, professional 
caregivers, and community healers" (89). Both researchers and mothers note 
that these gifts are deeply valuable and could, if understood by others, benefit 
and possibly transform American culture. 
The essays in Tranfoomative Motherhood are well written, engaging, and 
important. Theywill be especially helpful to parents who have been marginalized 
by mainstream American culture. This volume is suitable for women's studies 
courses and courses on motherhood andtor disabilities. 
Mother-Work: 
Women, Child Welfare and the State, 1890-1930 
Molly Ladd-Taylor 
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994 
Reviewed by Stephanie Chastain 
Marshall McLuhan once said that the politics was the offering of "yesterday's 
answers in response to today's questions." It  seems that what McLuhan failed 
to take into account was that today's questions are not very different from those 
Journal oftbe Associationfor Research on Mothen'ng 1 209 


Transformative Motherhood: On Giving and Getting in a Consumer Culture

Cummins, Helene A.

Finding Strength: A Mother and Daughter's Story of Childhood Cancer

Speller, Elisabeth

Book Reviews 
messenger of death, not in the negative sense of the word, but in that he brings 
the news of the cruel and sudden miracle of the cycle of our livesn (127). 
Waiting in the Wings is superbly written, a work that maintains and 
develops Chicana literary conventions in unexpected and thrilling ways that can 
be appreciated by a general audience. 
My Lesbian Husband: 
Landscapes of a Marriage 
Barrie Jean Borich 
St Paul: Graywolf Press, 1999 
Reviewed by Elisabeth Speller 
My Lesbian Husband is part memoir, part cultural exploration, and part love 
story, conceived as creative non-fiction. Here, Barrie Jean Borich explores the 
ways that words and actions inform and reform one another. She poses the 
question "Are we married?"-"wen being herself (a recovered alcoholic femme 
lesbian) and her butch lover of twelve years, the eponymous husband, Linnea. 
These two women are fumly set in the various milieux of their lives: their 
neighbourhood, their different families, and their various friends, both hetero- 
sexual and gay-lesbian-transgender-queer. 
Throughout the book, it is as if we are eavesdropping on the innermost 
thoughts of the author as she examines the cultural institution of marriage. In 
attempting to define what it is that holds her own relationship together, she 
explores myriad other relationships: mothers and their offspring (as children 
and adults), brothers and sisters, straight marriages, lesbian and gay male 
relationships, and friendships. She draws on her own experiences as daughter, 
sister, sister-in-law, niece, aunt, lover, and friend, as well as her observations of 
family members. By foregrounding cultural identity - Eastern European and 
Japanese in her own case, Italian in Linnea's, and the many andvaried identities 
throughout her neighbourhood - issues of race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism 
are raised. 
In addition, Borich provides a plotted and eminently readable account of 
the many nuances oflesbian politics in the United States during the second half 
of the twentieth century. She illuminates such aspects of lesbian culture as 
butddfemme, feminist politics, race, class, sexuality, alcohol and drug use, and 
non-monogamy. 
The book is full of contradictions and ambivalence, however. The reader 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 201 
Book Reviews 
is never certain that Borich wants to be married, even when she and Linneaget 
married in a kitsch Las Vegas wedding ceremony officiated by a lesbian 
minister. We never really know whether she wants to fit in with the straight 
world ofheterosexual couples or the seemingly subversive world exemplified by 
her quirky friends and neighbours, or does she flourish by being altogether 
different. 
We do learn that the bonds that hold two people together can be as firm 
and strong as they areinvisible. We are shown, however, that such bonds do not 
develop easily. This memoir/cultural exploration/love story, written with 
tenderness and toughness, utilizes a breathtaking range of sustained meta- 
phors. As a poet, Borich brings a deft touch to this exploration of two people 
embedded in communities that can sustain, and also challenge, their members. 
Halving It All: 
How Equally Shared Parenting Works 
Francine M. Deutsch 
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999 
Reviewed by Merryl Hammond 
Do not be fooled by the clever title. HalvingItAllis a Harvard University Press 
publication: heavilyfootnoted, referenced, and indexed, it includes 11 chapters 
with such titles as "Creating Equality at Home," "Career Detours," "The 
Mother and Mr. Mom," and "Equality Works." I t  is not an easy book to read. 
Author Francine Deutsch tries to put human faces on complex family arrange- 
m e n t ~ " S t e v e  and Beth stood in their kitchen discussing how they were going 
to manage the afternoon care of their four-year-old"-which is helpful. But 
several chapters later, when she again refers to Steve and Beth's arrangements 
and their methods of negotiating, I could not recall their particular case, having 
since encountered so many other couples and their childcare arrangements. 
Nevertheless, Deutsch explodes many commonly-held myths about parenting 
and occasionally offers succinct, gem-like flashes of insight. 
Examples of such gems include the following: "Daycare is the crucible on 
which ideals of equality are often destroyed" (159); "People changey' (216); 
and "Couples create equality by the accumulation of large and small decisions 
and acts that make up their everyday lives as parents" (230). Deutsch also 
quotes the individuals she interviewed for her study: "We're more equals. It's 
more like I'm his wife, not his slave" (181); and You can't raise children by 
spectating" (216). 
202 1 Volume 4, Number l 


My Lesbian Husband: Landscapes of a Marriage