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

Dunlop, Rishma

Slippage 
My neighbor's house 
stands tall, exemplary, 
a white standard 
on the tree-lined street 
where spills of children 
play in the fragrance 
of newly mown grass 
and friends gather like moths 
at patio barbecues, 
swim laps in blue pools 
of suburbia. 
Behind the pristine door 
the air is scented with peach 
and lemon pot-pourri, 
imported soaps, 
Gucci colognes and 
white terry cloth robes. 
One night in June 
the cul-de-sac is lit up 
red and blue lights pulsing 
in Delta Police cars 
he is escorted from his home 
the marriage ended 
156 1 Volume 4, Number 2 
in restraint and order 
his throat caught in the noose of love 
his raging words 
burn a path 
through his small sons' bodies 
across her lawn 
through her rose bushes 
That night I dream 
of masked raccoons 
night marauders 
owls following the paths of headlights 
a falcon circling small prey 
the tattered beat of wing 
I dream of consumption plants 
the choke of deadly nightshade 
stinging nettles along the Serpentine River 
I dream a black fisted storm 
a singular fury 
lightening razoring 
the neighbor's pine tree 
its scent in my nostrils 
crashing through my roof 
In the morning 
the tree still stands 
outside my window 
the sun rises 
a warm peach 
offering up seaside angelica 
the air full of anise swallowtails 
and red admiral butterflies 
At dawn 
I slip into my daughters' rooms 
listen to their measured breaths 
stroke their hair softly back 
from their foreheads. 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 157 


English

Slippage

Morsley, Angela

"Trapped for Life": Negotiating the Maze of Mother and Text in the Fiction of Elizabeth Jolley

Yu, Yi-Lin

The Grandmother/Mother/Daughter Triad: A Feminist Matrilineal Reading of Jung Chang's Wild Swans

Foley, Lara

Book Reviews 
site), paid maternity and paternityleaves, job sharing, and family-friendlywork 
environments, we're never going to have enough time. So our advice to YOU is 
to grab the moments you can for personal pleasure. And seize every possible 
opportunity to agitate for social change" (249-250). 
Other chapters explore topics such as building self-esteem, becoming a 
mother, sexuality as a parent, and raising sexually healthy children. The list of 
parenting resources at the back of the book are invaluable - I wish I'd had them 
at my fingertips earlier. In fact, the lists contain many addresses, websites, and 
telephone numbers I will pass on to my students. The list of research 
organizations will provide the basis for essays and reports, and the list ofhotline 
numbers listed will be useful for students, as well. In fact, this book will help 
raise the consciousness of all readers. 
At the Breast: 
Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood 
in the Contemporary United States 
Linda M. Blum 
Boston: Beacon Press, 1999 
Reviewed by Lara Foley 
Linda Blum's book, as its subtitle suggests, provides a complex and nuanced 
portrait of ideologies of breastfeeding and motherhood in the United States. 
She analyzes nineteenth and twentieth century medical discourses, popular 
advice literature on motherhood and breastfeeding, as well as data from 
participant observation and interviews with 28 members and leaders of La 
Leche League. Further, in an effort to hear the stories ofwomen who might be 
less influenced by dominant discourses, particularly working-class white and 
African-American mothers, Blum examines interview data from 34 women, 
recruited from an urban family practice clinic serving primarily low-income 
clients, as well as 19 women working as low-status hospital workers. 
Blum situates motherhood and breastfeeding as both personal experience 
and public issue, developed in the context of power relations. She suggests that 
scholarship on motherhood historically has either privileged lived-experience 
or has constructed mothers as subjects of institutional and cultural discourses. 
Blum argues that a scholarly discussion of motherhood should encompass 
"women's stories, but fiarned knowledgeably, sympathetically in larger con- 
texts; it is aviewofwomen as active subjects but subject toparticular constraints 
and conventionsn (10). Her work does exactly that. 
Blum gives an excellent overview of feminist theories on motherhood and 
198 ( Volume 4, Number l 
Book Reviews 
points out that this writing often ignores the physicality of mothering. She 
seeks to bring this perspective into view. As a related issue, Blum also examines 
the role of men in breastfeeding. In the introduction, she promises an extended 
discussion of men's claims to female bodies and sexuality in relation to 
breastfeeding. In the substantive, empirical chapters, however, the focus seems 
to be on men's presence or absence and their level of financial, emotional, and 
practical support, with far less discussion of their claims to women's bodies and 
sexuality. 
A central theme of this work is that the notion of intensive, exclusive 
mothering has been embedded in medical discourse, "expert advice," and that 
y and has always been a "white status-and class-enhancing project" (9). In  
chapter two, Blum argues that nineteenth century maternalist reform efforts, 
expert advice on motherhood, and policy issues related to motherhood set the 
stage for contemporary social movements and the formation of La Leche 
League in 1965. Chapter three examines the ideology and practices ofLa Leche 
League and the middle-class, white mothers who are members of this organi- 
zation. Chapters four and five address the meanings attached to breastfeeding 
bywhite, working-class and African American, working-class mothers, respec- 
tively, as well as the breastfeeding decisions and practices of these women. 
I assigned this text in a women's studies course entitled "Theories and 
Politics of Motherhood." The students responded positively, offering only one 
criticism: 'What about middle-class, African American women?" I echo this 
critique. The author's explanation for this absence is that La Leche League, 
where the middle-class respondents were found, is a white, middle-class 
organization. This explanation does little to satisfy the reader.1 enjoyed this 
book and have recommended it to sociology and women's studies scholars and 
students, as well as to women's health care professionals interested in 
breastfeeding. I would recommend this text for courses on motherhood and for 
courses on qualitative methods: it is a stellar example of interdisciplinary 
research methods. 
Waiting in the Wings: 
Portrait of a Queer Motherhood 
Cherrie Moraga 
Ithaca: Firebrand, 1997 
Reviewed by Colette Morrow 
Cherrie Moraga's Waiting in the Wings: Portrait ofa Queer Motherhood is an 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 199 


At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States

Hoogland, Cornelia

Cornelia Hoogland 
Difference is the Beauty 
Women dressing and undressing 
in a steamy bathroom 
in a converted schoolhouse, 
their breast-continuum like the ample 
belly of the bell curve. 
Sixteen pair. Not a silicone 
tear-shape, not a pin-up 
among the jingle-swing 
also the small cuppable 
~a rade  of them. These 
fruit tinted gold as day 
light through the window. 
Women drop terry robes 
and towels. Each pair 
of symmetrical breasts 
different from each other pair 
(and one has lost its mate). 
Each an original that resists 
the endless reproduction of perfection 
-those stacks of plastic K-Mart salad bowls. 
Instead a gardener's variegated delight. 
Along the cedar fence the mock orange 
blooms its fragrance of feathers, 
feathers Ann scatters 
just before the group photograph 
which makes us a little crazy 
reaching up for the white petals 
drifting our thirty arms braiding. 
Journal oftheAssociation for Research on Mothm'ng 1 19 


Difference is the Beauty

Algazi, Lisa G.

Martryed Mothers Never Die: The Legacy of Rousseau's Julie

Morrow, Collette

Book Reviews 
points out that this writing often ignores the physicality of mothering. She 
seeks to bring this perspective into view. As a related issue, Blum also examines 
the role of men in breastfeeding. In the introduction, she promises an extended 
discussion of men's claims to female bodies and sexuality in relation to 
breastfeeding. In the substantive, empirical chapters, however, the focus seems 
to be on men's presence or absence and their level of financial, emotional, and 
practical support, with far less discussion of their claims to women's bodies and 
sexuality. 
A central theme of this work is that the notion of intensive, exclusive 
mothering has been embedded in medical discourse, "expert advice," and that 
y and has always been a "white status-and class-enhancing project" (9). In  
chapter two, Blum argues that nineteenth century maternalist reform efforts, 
expert advice on motherhood, and policy issues related to motherhood set the 
stage for contemporary social movements and the formation of La Leche 
League in 1965. Chapter three examines the ideology and practices ofLa Leche 
League and the middle-class, white mothers who are members of this organi- 
zation. Chapters four and five address the meanings attached to breastfeeding 
bywhite, working-class and African American, working-class mothers, respec- 
tively, as well as the breastfeeding decisions and practices of these women. 
I assigned this text in a women's studies course entitled "Theories and 
Politics of Motherhood." The students responded positively, offering only one 
criticism: 'What about middle-class, African American women?" I echo this 
critique. The author's explanation for this absence is that La Leche League, 
where the middle-class respondents were found, is a white, middle-class 
organization. This explanation does little to satisfy the reader.1 enjoyed this 
book and have recommended it to sociology and women's studies scholars and 
students, as well as to women's health care professionals interested in 
breastfeeding. I would recommend this text for courses on motherhood and for 
courses on qualitative methods: it is a stellar example of interdisciplinary 
research methods. 
Waiting in the Wings: 
Portrait of a Queer Motherhood 
Cherrie Moraga 
Ithaca: Firebrand, 1997 
Reviewed by Colette Morrow 
Cherrie Moraga's Waiting in the Wings: Portrait ofa Queer Motherhood is an 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 199 
Book Reviews 
extended meditation on Lesbiana- Chicana lesbian - motherhood. It takes 
the form of a journal supplemented with commentaries, written retrospec- 
tively, on the original entries. The journal begins when Moraga becomes 
pregnant, continues with an account of her premature son's health problems, 
and ends when he is three years old. 
Themes present in Moraga's previous works reappear and converge in this 
book. As in her earlier writings, Moraga explores her desire for a child, the 
performance and meaning of lesbian sexual and emotional intimacy, and the 
nature of kinship in Mexican-American cultures. In Waiting in the Wings, she 
examines these themes from the new perspective of Lesbiana motherhood. 
Characteristically, Moraga infuses the book with mysticism and Chicana 
nationalism, brought into focus here through the figure of her son, Rafael. 
The prologue opens by proclaiming the biological impossibility of sarne- 
sex reproduction: "Our blood doesn't mix with. . . with an equal split o f D N A  
(15). Moraga subsequently questions why lesbians and gays - who lack the 
ability to reproduce with each other - wish to incorporate children in their 
families. Her answers range from personal to socio-cultural explanations. 
Most compelling is her suggestion that woman-centered lesbiana famiha is a 
revision of "something Mexican and familial ... without all the cultural 
constraints." Generative, lesbiana familia offers authenticity and healing in a 
world fraught with racism, sexism, homophobia, and abuse. I t  is an antidote to 
the death of the human spirit caused by oppression. 
Although Moraga's ideology of lesbiana familia is specifically lesbian and 
Chicana, the pathos of her self-portrait will evoke empathy. Passages chroni- 
cling Rafael's premature birth and his health crises in the intensive care nursery 
are particularly moving. By juxtaposing heart-wrenching descriptions of 
Rafael's medical procedures with brutally honest self-examination, Moraga 
vividlyreconstructs and shares her anger, fear, and guilt. Many readers also will 
empathize with Moraga's exhaustion as she attempts to balance parental and 
other responsibilities and reveals the toll this takes on her relationship with her 
partner, Ella. 
Although much of Waiting in the Wings concerns common parental 
experiences, it remains a story about a Lesbiana mother and her child. Readers 
frequently are reminded that lesbian mothers continue to encounter personal 
and institutional homophobia. Readers also are introduced to the emotional 
complications surrounding insemination. 
The book expresses Chicana literature's traditional concerns and themes. 
The role that spiritualityand religion - Mexican Catholicism and indigenous 
beliefs - play in subject constitution and cultural formation are reworked 
through Moraga's need for faith in crisis and as she contemplates the 
"mexicanismon that Rafael inherits. Finally, the Chicana assertion that familia 
is at once empowering and oppressive is reflected in Moraga's claim that there 
is a symbiotic connection between Rafael's birth and the deaths oftwo relatives. 
The final lines of the book brilliantly capture this sentiment: "Rafael . . . is a 
200 1 Volume 4, Number l 
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 


Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of a Queer Motherhood

Rosenzweig, Rosie

BE no fool

Bannan, Helen M.

"Thirty Billions of Things Started...and Done": Grandmothering in 20th Century Magazine Fiction

Nemzoff, Ruth

Berman, Rebecca

Book Reviewj 
Special Delivery: 
Mother-Daughter Letters from Afar 
Joyce Slayton Mitchell and Elizabeth Dix Mitchell 
Culver City, CA: EquiLibrium Press, 1999 
Reviewed by Ruth Nemzoff and Rebecca Norman 
Dear Becky, 
I have just finished reading a disquieting book,A SpecialDelive y: Mother- 
Daughter Lettersj-om Afar, by Joyce Slayton Mitchell and Elizabeth Dix 
Mitchell. The book contains correspondence between an American mother 
living in New York and her pregnant, unmarried daughter living in rural New 
Zealand. 
As the women exchange news of their daily lives and the impending birth, they 
demonstrate the difficulties of intergenerational communication. The mother 
sends carefully crafted, self censored messages to her daughter. The daughter 
says what she will and the mother continues to send circumspect advice and 
counsel. Throughout my reading, I wondered what this seemingly accepting 
mother would say of her daughter to her best woman friend. In fact, in the only 
letter to a friend included in this collection, Joyce vents her frustration over her 
daughter's choices. 
I found myselfunsettled, thinking about the price both generations pay for 
independence. This book shows the fine line between expressing things 
tactfully and being silenced. I wonder what you will think of this book. 
Love. Mom 
Dear Mom, 
I read the book you sent me before I read your letter. Boy, was I relieved 
to hear that you too had mixed feelings about the book! 
While there is always a perverse pleasure in reading other people's mail, I 
found these letters to be superficial. Given their circumstances-living on 
opposite sides of the globe and expecting a new child-one would think these 
women would send one another letters wrought with emotion. Instead, they 
skim the surface of their lives, briefly summarize events, and do not provide an 
honest account of their feelings. I hope that when I was teaching in Italy last 
year you did not feel so divorced from my life. 
I, too, found the mother's letters to be disquieting. Beneath the mother's 
carefully worded suggestions to get married and to give birth within driving 
distance of a hospital, a reader can easily sense disapproval. After a lifetime 
spent encouraging her daughter to be independent, her letters belie an inner 
struggle over where support ends and enabling begins. Their brief discussion 
of household finances (where Elizabeth snaps at her mother, reminding her 
204 ( Volume 4, Number l 
Book Reviews 
that she is 30 years old and capable of conservative spending) is the only time 
daughter and mother seem to be speaking to one another directly, rather than 
dithering over the details ofdaily life. Are most mothers so estranged from their 
daughters? W i l e  these thoughts can be teased out of the book, I wonder 
whether many readers will continue to the end. 
Much. love, Bec 
The New Don't Blame Mother: 
Mending the Mother-Daughter Relationship 
Paula J. Caplan 
New York: Routledge, 2000 
Reviewed by Gill Rye 
The cover of The New Don't Blame Mother announces that "this book has the 
power to change your relationship with your mother or daughter." This is a self- 
help book, an updated and revised edition of Caplan's original bestseller first 
published in 1989. The author is a clinical research psychologist and, in 
popularizing her subject, she does not hesitate to blame therapists for contrib- 
uting to the mother-blame that permeates society. 
The second edition includes a preface that takes account of newly pub- 
lished material in the field. Here, Caplan also points to recent social changes, 
such as developments in reproductive technologies and new trends in parenting 
and family arrangements that impact on the ways mothers continue to be 
blamed in society. The discussion relates primarily to the United States and 
Canada (and due praise is given to the activities of ARM). 
The thesis of the book rests on two assumptions: first, that most mother- 
daughter relationships are not merely ambivalent but frequently a source of 
great pain; and second, that one of the major causes of such difficulty is the 
extent to which society blames mothers for everything that is wrong with their 
children. In The New Don't Blame Mother, Caplan seeks to help mothers and 
daughters help themselves by learning from the experiences of others and by 
thinking positively. Social attitudes towards mothers are analyzed through the 
polarized myths of the Perfect Mother and the Bad Mother. The Perfect 
Mother is an unlimited, natural nurturer; the Bad Mother is, at once, the 
motherwho stays home and the motherwho has apayingjob outside the home. 
Whether "perfect" or "bad," mothers are blamed for not conforming to 
stereotype. 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 205 


Special Delivery: Mother-Daughter Letters from Afar