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

Bushnell, Jeanette

Jeanette Bushnell 
Tribal Mothering as 
Portrayed in Paula Gunn 
AI len's Spider Woman's 
Granddaughters 
As the story unfolds, it becomes a part of their present. As you imagine 
and visualize in the mind's eye, how could you not become a part of 
it and it a part ofyou? There is no separation. The story and the words 
contain the epistemological webbing. (Kawagley, 1998: 3) 
The challenge undertaken in this paper is to tease out elements of 
motherhood from within the matrix of Native American culture. Adding 
difficulty to this task is that the culture is ever changing, not static. Paula Gunn 
M e n  has, by collecting such a variety of stories, exposed the fluid and circular 
nature ofwomen's roles in tribal culture and challenged the reader to search for 
commonalties that belie the traditional. 
Native stories fulfd the roles of history, literature, education, entertain- 
ment, and art. They are not readily comparable to western1 fiction or non- 
fiction essays. They diier in structure, language, and culture. The stories don't 
have building conflict or an individual protagonist; their coherence is from a 
common understanding. Where western writers write as individuals, making 
up their creative ideas which have a coherence ofplace, person and time, Native 
writers write from a collective tribal unconsciousness (Gunn Men ,  1989: 5). 
Language limits understanding of Native stories. Linguists teach that a 
language embodies the culture it belongs to. Philosophers caution that the oral 
and written words are potentially misleading representations of reality. As- 
sumptions and orientation are built into the vocabulary and structure. 
The word "warrior," for example, within most Native traditions connotes 
a person, woman or man, living an honourable and correct life as opposed to the 
English meaning of soldier or fighting man. One of my Quileyute mentors 
often lamented her inability to explain to me knowledge about reality, as she 
130 1 Volume l ,  Number l 
understood it, because she could not make English words create Native ideas. 
Gunn M e n  states that "certain ideas and concepts that are implicit in the 
structure of an Indian language are not possible in Englishw (1986: 225). 
Ursula-Le Guin (1989) also speaks to the deficiencies of English when 
reading Native stories. "Reading an oral piece translated from its original 
language to English, and from voice to print, is like reading a musical score: you 
have to know a lot before you can hear what's happeningw (2). This is 
particularly pertinent in "Oshkikwe's Baby.' Delia Oshogay (1989) moves 
comfortably amongst ideas that to the Western reader represent the different 
realms of physical, spiritual and temporal reality. Details of the story, such as 
travel through a small hole in the ground, are more meaningful with knowledge 
of Anishinabe culture and world views. 
Traditional values addressed in the book, Spider Woman's Granddaughters: 
Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women are 
harmony, connectedness, community, balance, relationships, and dignity. 
Traditional systems focus on social responsibility rather than privilege, and 
social control is achieved with an absence of punitiveness. Joking and embar- 
rassment is used to change a person's behaviors. Harmony and balance are to 
be smven for within all aspects of life and mothers are to maintain harmony 
around them and their chiildren. A critical task of life, of which parents are 
expected to teach their chiildren, is to know oneself (Kawagley, 1998). 
Connectedness, community,  family. relationships 
How was I to know the depth of my traditional beliefs? Mother, though 
raised within reservation culture, had moved far away from that life-physi- 
cally, emotionally, culturally-long before I was born. My childhood was 
small-town U.S.A with no talk of our Native heritage. Mother had worked 
hard to achieve a separation from her own childhood which was darkened with 
prejudice and limited opportunities. She wanted better for her children. 
Two years ago, my husband was asked to take an administrative position 
in Alaska. Although we had often talked ofgoing to the wild northern state, the 
discussions had diminished as the children were born and grew. We settled in 
a small community just north of Seattle, within an hour's drive of my parents 
and all my siblings' homes. My only complaint had been the urban lifestyle; my 
dream was to move back to a small town or rural area. Alaska fit the bill and so 
we began planning the move. 
Rare have been my forays away from my family. A short year in New York 
City for college when I was just out of high school was all unless you count my 
parents' three-year move to Virginia when I was thirty. The New York 
experience was overwhelming but somewhat expected for an eighteen-year-old 
small-towngirl. I didn't share my distress when my parents left. After all, I was 
grown and married and had children ofmy own. Periodically it would wash over 
me as an intense sadness. I was just there, not grounded, attached to nothing. 
In Alaska I live with my husband and youngest daughter. At home are two 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 131 
daughters, parents, four brothers and a sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and 
nephews enough to fill a triiogy of novels. I work at a llfilling job and I take 
classes from stimulating teachers but my life rings hollow like footfalls in an 
empty hall. 
Paula Gunn Allen 
The stories in Spider Woman's Granddaughters come from a variety of 
traditions, time periods, and personal experiences. Their commonalties are that 
they are women's war stories or women warrior stories (Gunn Men ,  1989: 21). 
They speak of women in battle and women living the life of warriors and 
contained within them are many truths about Native traditions. They also tell 
us about the writers and their experiences, for as Joseph Campbell (1972) says, 
stories are living entities-which change with each telling. A story tells-as-much 
about its speaker as it does its message. Campbell makes this point by 
comparing various bible stories and how they have changed over time. The 
genesis storywritten in the ninth-century BCE claims that God made man and 
woman together after animals, whereas the second-century AD genesis story 
has men being created before animals, and woman coming later from man's rib. 
Although, for the most part, this is the same story, there is a dear change in 
focus regarding the relationship between women and men (1972: 7). 
The reader should keep this in mind when reading the seemingly tradi- 
tional stories, such as Ella Cara Deloria's, "Blue Bird's Offeringn (1989). 
Although the story includes many elements of Sioux life, it reads like a genre 
romance. Gunn M e n  warns that westernization of the oral tradition pollutes 
from a patriarchal bias that discounts, degrades, or conceals gynocratic features 
or recontextualizes these features so they will appear patriarchal (1986: 4). The 
last stories in the Spider Woman's Granddaughters are current and utilize modern 
settings but incorporate traditional beliefs and structure. They leave the reader 
with a haunting image of the life-ways of Native peoples. 
Traditional Native American culture, values, and beliefs can be easily 
delineated but to understand the profoundly different worldview is nearly 
impossible. Native tribal people share a different consciousness than Europe- 
ans. Imagine a Native American-European culture continuum. Those of the 
dominant culture envision this continuum as a line with their culture on one 
end. Now imagine that you are standingon this line and turn around, awayfrom 
the dominant culture end. As you come around you find yourself not facing the 
other end of the line, but within a circle. This circle is tribal culture. Within it 
are future and past, physical reality and spiritual reality, the individual and all 
humans, animals, plants, rocks, planets, stars, ad infinitum. Everythingwithin 
the circle is connectedwith something English has no words to describe. Louise 
Erdrich (1989) speaks about this as a "webn in her story "American Horsen: 
She took a quick shallow breath and her face went strange and tight. 
She saw the blackveins in the wings of the butterfly, roads burnt into 
132 1 Volume I ,  Number 1 
Tribal Mothering 
a map, and then she was located somewhere in the net of veins and 
sinew that was the tragic complexity of the world so she did not see 
Officer Brackett and Vicki Koob rushing toward her, but felt them 
instead like flies caught in the same web, rocking it (59). 
All children are valued and bonded with their entire communities. As a 
corollary to this, all people are valued as equals and seen to complement one 
another. Women are central to the tribe and share responsibilities equally with 
the men. Tribal lifestyles are often gynocratic and never patriarchal. Women 
and men have different roles but both are essential to the well-being of the tribe. 
And, openly recognized is that women don't have much knowledge of men's 
roles, nor men of women's roles. Expected behaviors are based on realities of 
the human condition. Chiidren are accepted for what they are-still making 
mistakes, still learning. Adults anticipate "childishness" and accomodate it. 
People are not compelled to conform to a social fiction (Gunn Men ,  1986; 
Kawagley, 1989). 
Communal parenting, dignity, empowermen t  
One-and-a-half years ago, two of our three daughters moved to Alaska 
with my husband and I. Violet, then twenty and a sophomore in college, felt 
comfortable staying behind to continue her studies. She got an apartment with 
friends but her favorite uncle was just a few miles away to handle emergencies 
and be available. She went to familygatherings for birthdays and small holidays 
whiie we would only hear about them long distance. Decisions about summer 
jobs, classes, and how to fm the car were dealt with by my brothers, sister, and 
parents. And I would get a phone call. 
In  Alaska all was new. Without their lifelong friends, the girls started 
riding lessons, flute lessons and after school activities-things they hadn't done 
much at home. We  became two M-time working parents juggling jobs, 
carpools, and home chores. In lieu of family get-togethers we spentweekends 
traveling around the state. It was fun. 
Julia lasted one year, then said she was going home to finish high school 
with her buddies. She didn't ask, just let us know her plans. It sounded good 
to me and I was more than ready to move back home, but Kale then twelve, 
asserted herself and refused to go back "just because Julia wants to." My 
husband was enjoying this new lifestyle and had no intention of returning. 
I still had the option-return home to my family and be with my two oldest 
daughters or stay in Alaska to mother the youngestwho, if1 leftwould have only 
her father and heworkedlong hours andwas frequentlyout oftown. The choice 
was there but.. . 
I asked non-Native friends for advice but mostly got ultimatums and 
power positioning. "Just tell her she has to stayn (or go, depending on the girl 
in question). Or  belittling, "I can't believe you'd let Julia and Violet live alone 
together. They don't even like each other." My familywas supportive, offering 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 133 
any help the girls might need and encouraging their move to independence and 
maturity. No one was without a strongly-felt opinion and when I was not 
completely oppressed by my pending decision, I enjoyed an intellectual 
appreciation of cultural values and beliefs at work. 
Paula Gunn M e n  
In Native culture parenting is a communal activitywith mothers acknowl- 
edged as the primary caregivers. The ideal role models for children are decisive, 
self-directed females and nurturing, pacifist males (Gunn Men,  1986: 2). We  
see these role models portrayed in a number of the stories in Spider Woman's 
Granddaughters as well as in Mourning Dove's, Coyote Stories (1990). Parenting 
is accomplished through active role modeling and storytelling. Stories teach 
the young how to live as well as teach the adults how to parent. Teachingwhat 
to model and how to parent is a strong theme ranging from the very traditional 
in Delia Oshogay's, "Oshkikwe's Baby" (1989) to very current in Vicki Sears' 
story, "Grace." 
Parenting is learned and many of the elder generation of Native parents 
learned their roles not from traditional family but by others-boarding school 
teachers, Christian missionaries, tuberculosis sanitarium nurses and doctors, 
government agents, non-Native foster parents. These elders saw models of 
abuse, neglect, terrorization, genocide, starvation, and humiliation (Gunn 
Men ,  1986). Native tradition teaches that it takes seven generations to move 
beyond an event and this is very evident in parenting. Pieces of tradition endure 
along with elements of the colonizing culture and elements of pure dyshnc- 
tion. Today's Native parents struggle with the conflicting messages. 
(Im)balance, (dis)harmony, mother, daughter, sister, wife, 
teacher, learner 
"Well, Fuck You!" Violet sneered into the phone. "Thanks a fucking lot! 
Good-bye!" 
My part of the conversation was easy, few words were expected after I said 
a rare, "No" to her request for her 32-year-old friend to use my phone card. She 
was obviously distraught when she called and rebuffed my efforts to explore 
solutions to her latest earth-shattering problem. Violet doesn't do mellow. 
I am already unsettled. Two large tasks for which I have little experience 
await me at work. I must write a large final exam without the aid of an 
instructor's manual. Who would have thought writing tests would be as 
difficult as taking them? Plus I must give two presentations about our grant to 
a statewide audience at the Egan Center. Much as I convince myselfthat it will 
be no different than the lectures I give every week, nerves all over my body are 
firing randomly like little fire crackers. 
I want to call my mother but dare not mention my daughter's appalling 
behavior. Dad would be supportive but he's most likely asleep by now. I share 
with my husband. He, too, feels like he's been hit. We stand at the stove 
134 1 Volume l, Number l 
Tribal Mothering 
waiting for tea water to boil wondering, "What did we do wrong?" Knowing 
that such thoughts are a dead end, we try to make it positive and personal. 
"Her anger always makes me feel so bad," my husband says. 
"I wish I knew what was bothering her," I counter. "I wish she knew." 
He has his nightly herbal tea and I my ice water and we both sleep badly. 
Tuesday morning I'm very tired. My head feels like it is not well-attached 
to my leaden body as I shower and eat my toast. Somehow I make it to work 
a little early and begin that r o u t i n m m  on the desk lamp, light the scented 
candle, turn on the computer, start the tape of Yo Yo Ma playing Bach. Only 
one benign voice message from a student thanking me for something or other, 
many emails about Lushootseed, the Native language I am learning and one 
from %olet, sent this morning, all cheerlid, like nothing had happened. I close 
my door and cry. 
My brother has my name in our family Christmas gift exchange and I 
guiltily burden him with my wish list by email. All I want for Christmas is 
something to help me deal with my oldest daughter. He is like a second father 
to her and much more patient than I. He has been through it all with me. I know 
he will understand. All the same, I feel it is unfair. I send it. 
The encroachment of Western civilization in the Yupiaq world 
changed a people that did not seek changing. (Kawagley, 1998: 5) 
'Throughout this paper several authors are quoted, each with their own 
terminology of cultures and groups of people. Native American, tribal native 
and traditional all refer to the culture of the people indigenous to North 
America. Western, European and dominant describe the culture and heritage 
of the colonizing peoples. 
References 
Campbell, Joseph. 1972. Myths to Live By. New York Bantam. 
Deloria, Ella Cara. 1989. "Blue Bird's Offering." Spider Woman's Granddaugh- 
ten: Traditional Talesand Contemporary Writing by NativeAmerican Women. 
Ed. Paula Gunn Allen. New York: Fawcett Columbine. 98-110 
Gunn Allen, Paula, ed. 1986. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in 
American Indian Traditions. Boston: Beacon. 
Gunn Allen, Paula, ed. 1989. Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional 
Tales and Contempora ry Writing by Native American Women. New York: 
Fawcett Columbine. 
Erclrich, Louise. 1989. "American Horse." Spider Woman's Granddaughters: 
Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women. 
Ed. Paula Gunn Allen. New York: Fawcett Columbine. 48-61. 
Kawagley, Angayuqaq Oscar. 1998. "Yupiaq Education Revisited." Arctic 
Circle, University of Connecticut. (N.D.): 9. Internet. 24 Nov. 1998. 
Journal oftbe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 135 
Jeanette Burhnell 
Le Guin, Ursula K. 1989. "Above M, Keep the Tale Going." The N m  York 
Times Late City Final Edition Section 7 (14 May 1989): 4. Online. 
Internet. 6 November 1998. 
Mourning Dove. 1990. Coyote Stories. Ed. H .  D. Guie. Lincoln: University of 
Nebraska. 
Oshogay, Delia. 1989. "Oshkikwe's Baby." Spider Woman's Granddaughters: 
Traditional Tales and Contempora y Writing by Native American Women. 
Ed. Paula Gunn Men.  New York: Fawcett Columbine. 43-47. 
Pretty Shield. 1989. "A Woman's Fight." Spider Woman's Granddaughters: 
Traditional Tales and Contempora y Writing by Native Amrrican Women. 
Ed. Paula Gunn Allen. New York: Fawcett Columbine. 31-33. 
Sears, Vickie L. 1989. "Grace." Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional 
Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women. Ed. Paula 
Gunn Allen. New York: Fawcett Columbine. 168-187. 
136 1 Volume I ,  Number 1 


English

Tribal Mothering as Portrayed in Paul Gunn Allen's Spider Woman's Granddaughter

Kendall, Shari

Magenau, Keller

"He’s Calling her Da Da!": A Sociolinguistic Analysis of the "Lesbianism as Disease" Metaphor in Child Custody Cases

Sorensen, Kathleen

Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and Postpartum Depression

Herlich, Liz

The Sacred Art of Conception

Bryant-Richards, Beth Ann

B e t h  Ann Bryant-Richards 
Pulling the Tangles Out 
When I'm not good enough 
as a mother, 
I think of my own Mama 
pulling the tangles out 
of my straight brown hair 
with the pink plastic 
stiff-bristled brush, 
parting with a rat-tail comb, 
coaxing my front cowlick into bangs, 
sweeping my shoulder-length hair 
up in a pony tail, 
spraying the wisps, then 
smoothing them down 
with the palms of her hands, 
moving aside the pony tail 
to kiss my nape. 
How many hours did she spend 
bent over me in the bathroom? 
Now I pray to her: 
Send me your spirit. 
I needyour patience 
for my little man, 
his blue denim hat just 
pulled down sharp 
over his straight brown hair. 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothm'ng 1 125 


Pulling the Tangles Out

Elbert, Monika

Book Reviews 
lesbian, black, Native American, and disabled mothers. Grouped with sections 
titled "Fathering," "Kin Networks," and "Marriage and Divorce," under the 
larger rubric of Webs  of Family Relationships," this section situates mother- 
hood in a larger context than the dual-parent, nuclear-family norm. 
I t  is u se l l  to consider the appropriateness of an anthology for a feminist 
project such as Hansen and Garey's. If feminism is a collective movement, then 
the inclusion of many different voices is an apt expression of that movement. 
Each essay is one voice in a larger narrative and contributes to the text of 
feminism itself. One might also consider the sorts ofbiases or assumptions that 
shape the compilation and organization of this anthology. The "Guide to 
Topics," for instance, makes clear that the editors do not distinguish between 
gender and biological sex, despite their attempt to broaden the possibilities for 
family and positions within the family. Such a distinction would allow us to 
pose questions like "Can men mother?" or "How does a single mother fill the 
shoes of an absent father?" In addition, it is revealing that the "Guide to Topics" 
includes the category "Men and Masculinity" but not Women and Feminin- 
ity" or another female counterpart. Perhaps this is no oversight on the editors' 
part, but a sign of our own times and our cultural anxiety about the role of men 
in the family. 
The editors end their introduction with an acknowledgement of a popular 
misconception: that feminism and family are incompatible. I t  is their hope, and 
my belief, that this anthology counters that misconception. This collection 
contributes to alarger feminist projectwhich demonstrates that, in Hansen and 
Garey's words, "Feminists care passionately about families" (m). 
Death and the Mother from Dickens to Freud: 
Victorian Fiction and the Anxiety of Origins. 
Carolyn Dever. 
New York Cambridge University Press, 1998 
Reviewed by Monika Elbert 
Carolyn Dever's book is a well-researched and excellent study about the 
actual medical and the idealized literary versions of mothers dying in childbirth 
in Victorian England. Dever claims that there are parallels between the 
construction of family origins in mid-Victorian novels and Freud's psychoana- 
lytic paradigm of family and gender. They depend upon the same principle: the 
death of the mother, the absence of the mother, or the inefficacy of the living 
mother. In the Victorian and Freudian narrative, there is a longing for an 
Journalofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 21 7 
Book Reviews 
idealized mother, but when that mother becomes too real through an actual 
encounter, there is a deep sense of maternal loss. Thus, the missing, spectral, 
or dead mother who can be embodied and embraced in one's imagination is 
preferable to the all too real mother, who evokes anxieties in the child about his/ 
her own personal history or genealogy. Indeed, in the imagination of the 
Victorians, 'the only good mother is a dead mother" (19). 
Dever traces the formulation of the melancholic narrative of the absent 
mother back to eighteenth-century developments in the novel, the Gothic and 
the "Bildungsroman," which both necessitate the character's separation from 
the mother as a move towards adulthood. According to Dever, there are three 
types of melancholic novels: the sentimental novel, which employs maternal 
absence to create an idealized picture of the family; the erotic novel, which uses 
maternal absence to illuminate the conflict of the adolescent sexual coming-of- 
age; and the emancipatory novel, in which maternal absence implies potential 
freedom for the motherless child in choosing her life direction outside of 
conventional marriage. 
Dever very effectively applies her paradigm of the melancholic maternal 
narrative to three representative mid-Victorian novels: Dickens's Bleak Houre, 
Wikie Collins's The Woman in White, and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. 
Indeed, there are other novels (by these authors and others) that fit and which 
she mentions in passing. I was a bit disappointed that she did not show the 
implications of maternal absence in the late-Victorian novel, as in Hardy, 
where Darwinian notions of motherhood complicate the picture and which 
strip the ideal, the psychological, with a more bioiogical of motherhood. 
Her book ends with two short chapters-an excellent psychological reading of 
Darwin's relationship with his mother, a chapterwhich could have been applied 
more c a r e u y  to the entire study, and a less effective and very short chapter on 
Virginia Woo& which seems to have been added as an after-thought. Finally, 
though Dever broaches the subject of missing, absent, or effete fathers in 
Victorian novels (and there are countless numbers, especially in Dickens), she 
seems to privilege the space of the missing mother. 
To  Dever's credit, she has a long introductory section focusing on 
psychoanalytic critics who examine the child's relationship with the absent or 
phallic mother. Leading off with Freud, Dever then explores challenges and 
modifications to Freudian theory with Melanie Klein's and D.W. Winnicott's 
notion of maternal subjectivity and objectivity, and the child's ambivalent 
desire for the all-powerful mother and fear of abandonment. While Dever 
appropriately uses Kristeva's notion of the semiotic maternal, she might also 
have used Kristeva's notion of the maternal melancholic to strengthen her 
case. The most unsettling feature of Dever's study is her suggestion that 
Freud's concept of maternal loss grew out of the paradigm which informed 
mid-Victorian novels. I t  might have been more culturally or historically 
accurate to examine some of the Germanic novels (perhaps even fairy tales) 
which Freud would have known or read instead of placing him exclusively 
218 1 Volume l, Number l 
Book Reviews 
within an English literary context. 
I was most stunned and awed by the epigraphs which are interspersed 
between chapters. Here Dever shows her meticulous research into the actual 
causes of maternal death or madness in Victorian England, and her poignant 
epigraphs, taken from contemporary medical records, manuals, and journals, 
show just how far removed the picture of the fictional idealized dead mother 
was from that of the real dying or diseased mother. But these corpses remind 
us, as Dever's study suggests, that the Victorian novels are really not "concerned 
with the woman behind the mother they mourn" (35). 
A Tradition That Has No Name: Nurturing the 
Development of People, Families and Communities. 
Mary Field Belenky, Lynne A. Bond and Jacqueline Weinstock. 
New York: Basic Books, 1997. 
Reviewed by Anna Mae Duane 
As the title suggests, A Tradition that HasNo Name deals with a maternal 
mode of experience largely unarticulated in established scholarly discourses. 
The authors argue that nurturing feminist leadership has been practiced for 
centuries, but the tradition's alternative methods and largely invisible clientele 
have kept it from getting the recognition it deserves. Through the description 
of their own work and that ofvarious feminist organizations, the authors hope 
to elucidate this nameless tradition, and expand its capacity to empower the 
lives of marginalized and silenced people. Building on the insights gained from 
Mary BelenYs 1986 Women's Ways of Knowing in conjunction with the 
epistemological theories of Carol Gilligan, Paulo Freire, andTheodor Adorno, 
the authors delineate a comprehensive leadership model for families, commu- 
nities and organizations. This alternative model privileges inclusion, discussion 
and empathy rather than the hierarchy, argument and competition that pervade 
mainstream thought. 
The book's first section describes the Listening Partners project, a public 
service program the authors created to bring impoverished and undereducated 
women "into voicew through verbal and written dialogue. The authors describe 
individual cases (such as a rape victim who moves beyond shame and silence to 
finally confront her rapist) and-in so doing provide an overview of the project 
itself to present a pedagogical model with striking interdisciplinary potential. 
The study represents a particularly significant contribution to the fields ofsocial 
Journal ofthe Associationjior Research on Mothering 1 21 9 


Death and the Mother from Dickens to Freud: Victorian Fiction and the Anxiety of Origins

Epstein, Rachel

Our Kids in the Hall: Lesbian Families Negotiate the Public School System

Journal of The Association for Research on Mothering Fall/Winter 1999, Vol 1, No 2, 160 pages

Alkalay-Gut, Karen

Karen Alkalay-Gut 
Grandmother Reconsiders Her Knitting 
Protecting a child's name 
with a voluminous cape 
was the first mistake 
an anonymous little girl 
her face hooded 
from human gaze 
in a forest 
And why red? 
Shouldn't I have given her 
a briar patch 
to maneuver 
the enticing wood 
knowing the wolf 
was drawn 
to the brightness 
of little girls? 
And why is she known only 
by this garish robe 
instead of her kindness 
to her ancestor? 
It was a mistake 
to place the weight 
of our existence 
on her shoulders 
148 1 Vohme I ,  Number 1 


Grandmother Reconsiders Her Knitting

Harris, Brigitte

Redefining Motherhood: Changing Identities and Patterns