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

 ,  

English

Contributor Notes

Caragata, Lea

Dunn, Peter

Balfour, Janet

Singled Out And Left Behind: Canadian Lone Mothers in a Time of Plenty

Kruk, Laurie

 journal of the motherhood initiative       247 
Time Coming
laurie kruk
i
For thirty-five years, 
“Time coming,” Baba used to mutter. Satisfaction 
in the argument-ending certainty 
of a clock hand’s crawl, moving her out in the company  
of ancestors, saints and the pre-ordered funeral package, planting her beside 
husband #2, Emilyan, who fell from her pruning. 
Satisfaction, in the way she wrung a dishcloth 
or stabbed at the potatoes. Comfort in the silence she could generate, 
dark cloud spreading like squid’s ink as we sat at her table, forking down 
mountains of cabbage, beef and rice
pickled beets bleeding 
onto chipped Woolco saucers. “Not gonna live forever—“ Though  every year
we denied it—grew up, older—and she disproved it. Seventy-five, eighty, 
ninety and beyond. To the Nursing Home, where they only spoke English. 
Hired illegal immigrants to wash, dress and wheel our grandparents, 
weekly deposits
at the Visitor’s Room. 
ii
At 100, she descends to a wheelchair, without benefit of a mp’s photo-opp. 
Celebrations turn to accusations of her seventy-eight-year old son, 
now known as her brother, and “stealing my new potatoes—thief!”
No longer Miss Clairol-orange, her feathers of white fire wildly as she fixes 
me, the unexpected Wedding Guest, Christmas, with an eye ever-bright for 
For Helen Kowalchuk (1904-2005)
U.S.S.R.-Canada
laurie kruk
248       volume 3, number 1
the world’s worry. It’s the boys, she tells us, a river of words, in Russian, then 
English, they need shelter, and clothes. “Police, lost, lost. Poor Chupchik.”* 
Who will help? Her flood won’t be dammed by barriers erected feebly now, 
with comments on the weather, a gift of soap, the pla stic evergreen. “Ah, 
the winters were terrible there,” whether Kirkland Lake or her village in 
Belarus. “Yes, Nicky, he was going to become a teacher, but he needed new 
shoes. And a pair of glasses—he broke the last ones, chased home from 
school by that bully, Anton.” I sit up; Dad sighs. “You  know, I rang and 
rang, I was trying to phone the police, but that woman, she never came.” 
A nurse passes, peers in and says isn’t it nice that Grandma has visitors for 
Christmas. And that it’s almost lunch time. Baba glares, “And the soup, I 
wanted to tell you, it had no flavour at all. A nothing soup.”
iii
Diapers called Depends are now changed by brisk brown women who know 
her as Elly, always talking about her washing or cooking. Cutting down her 
skirts and blouses to clothe the lost boys, so that she sits  in Wal-Mart sacks, 
tattered and safety-pinned. Now in Russia, now in Kirkland where husband 
#1, Mike, finally brought her and chupchik, Baba rides the halls of memory, 
startling the blank faces she meets. In conversation with her “brother” who 
remembers her son’s birth. She, 21, in a shed beside the wheatfield she was 
scything. Two women watching. “I was so thin, so young. Had no milk. Had 
to hand him to the woman beside me, her baby died. Anton.”
Stopping before the photos of her 100th birthday party, she jabs a finger and 
says “See, my mother—like monkey—she lived too long, too long—”
iv
As we listen, her second granddaughter, 39, waits in hospital for the pains, 
the driving division that will turn her world inside out, begun again. Her 
husband holding her hand, rubbing her back, drinking her fear but ready 
with the camera and the rose in plastic.  The ghost that haunted her nine-
month house of flesh will put his feet down, sensing earth, now hidden 
under the first snow.  Claim flesh’s dear indignities, and a name. The purple 
wail that ends with him crushed to her filling breast, an echo 
down the halls of memory
of the hundred years of his great-grandmother’s losing, gaining and worrying. 
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 journal of the motherhood initiative       249 
The mother, the timekeeper.  Like the puppy trick:  
a hot water bottle and clock, wrapped in flannel, 
tucked beside the whimpering whelp 
whose only comfort  is breathing in the beats 
of mother time. 
* “child” (Russian)


Time Coming

244       volume 3, number 1
my mother did not tell stories
laurie kruk
My mother did not tell stories—
instead, passed around our  sticky kitchen table
warnings, worries, laments, teatime croonings, 
that diluted childhood, muted its paintbox primary
with shadings and greys from the dark pages
of adult discouragement. Being a man is hard work—
don’t ask your brother to dry the dishes.
Or, My father never wanted us—the ccf took up his whole heart. 
About Grandma Elsie, dead when I closed the first circle of seasons,
My mother kept running away, but her Irish relations could only afford 
to send her home.  To “your husband.”  I was never so happy 
as when they called after me, in Belfast, “Hey Canada!” Felt like a comic-book heroine, 
my tits turned pointy as maple leaves. 
Our growing-up years
were not nourished by stories built around survival,
but hard crusts left over from times of stubbornness, 
just enough to start a life on. Charlie and Elsie’s bitter marital loaf
the proverbs of worry nibbled by my mother, sister, five grandkids.
Like a photo of Charlie’s White Rose Gas Station, forties, Windsor, 
where they all 
slept in the back room, wearing the reek
of engine oil, spilled gasoline
like a caste mark.
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 journal of the motherhood initiative       245 
Selling out, Charlie went on the Line at Chrysler. 
Working overtime at the Top Hat Grill, Elsie became radiantly tragic 
hoping each night to be taken away
by a sensitive post-war millionaire, won by her smile 
and careful way placing the coffee cups, 
not a drop  lost. Later, when my mother was engaged, 
Elsie’s rocking chair blessing: Men have all the power, but
they don’t know it, unless we let them. Don’t let him. Cradling her saucer 
of cold tea 
like a still-born. Five years later, ballooned by the illness gnawing
at her bowels, Elsie floated over the Atlantic in morphine dreams, before 
the landlady phoned 
and they carried her back, terminally in arrears. Murmuring to the v.o.n. 
Mother, Mother—may I please come home, now?
My father did not tell stories: 
Baba’s memories, half-buried in Russian,
were too radioactive to unearth, like Chernobyl’s ashy soil, 
not far from where he was born. Too much old world pain waved away—
dysentery, orphans, typhus,
greedy landlords, rotten potatoes, stolen land, emigration—
why drag it over the ocean?
So she muttered, half in English
and he would nod, sinking in his chair, retired teacher
recalling the mining town he was raised in, the ungentle man they left behind
for a new start in the border city,  new father, school for Nick in Detroit:
subsiding into silence after two helpings of her cherry pie.
Along with ten dollar bills, folded into our sticky palms like crushed moths
Baba provided these free lessons: 
Don’t trust no-bahdee.
Look after yu-self.
Keep yur kitchen clean,
Yu money inside an old shoe.
Men, yu don’t need. 
Die, yu owe nuthin to no-bahdee.
laurie kruk
246       volume 3, number 1
Although Baba lived to one hundred, burying three husbands,
her triumph never quite equaled the loss—
moving, marrying, leaving, forgetting, burying—
the stories were lost to her rocking-chair’s rhythm, grooves 
worn into the floor while we waited 
to turn on the tv, or escape to boys with cars. Only when we were waving 
good-bye, from the parking lot of the Home
to her balcony watch
did the old words suddenly flow
from her lips:  curses or thanks, 
we’ll never know.


my mother did not tell stories

Nelson Villanueva, Karen

book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative             277 
The Face of Water: 
New and Selected Poems
McCallum, Shara.  
Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2011.
Reviewed by Karen Nelson Villanueva
In her most recent collection of poetry, Shara McCallum looks directly into 
the face of water to recognize her birth in this world. McCallum is a gifted 
poet who tests the waters of her life to measure its distance from the past and 
to gauge its depth in the present.
In section one, which comprises poems previously published in The Water 
between Us, the speaker assesses the distance between herself and her mother 
in “Jamaica, October 18, 1972:” once close as the amniotic fluid flowing down 
her mother’s legs; now “the water between us becoming a river” (32). In this 
selection of poems, the speaker probes her past through the eyes of a child—a 
picknie—in Jamaica. 
In section two, the speaker in poems from Songs of Thieves seeks to under-
stand herself in relation to the world. Here we encounter themes of an absent 
father, the othering of self as mulatta and octaroon, god as mother and father, 
and the longing of her mother. In “Tanglehair’s Mother Speaks,” the speaker’s 
mother laments, “All day, I watch you grow away from me: little one” (62). 
In “The Madwoman Dreams of the Beginning,” the speaker asserts “before 
I was, I was”(67), which begs the question: Do we know the we, we ought to 
be, the we we will become?
In section three, in poems from This Strange Land, the speaker again mea-
sures the distance between herself and where she comes from, where she is, 
and where she is going. Truth is revealed in “The Waves,” “when everything 
comes apart, is ripped so clean who you are is laid bare” (92). In “The Shore,” 
the speaker in love watches “the distance between us grow wider, feeling the 
thread that binds us loosen” (98). In “From the Book of Mother,” the mother 
feels the “water’s blind grace, the current’s whims (108) … rowing away from 
the shore” (109).  Fearing the inevitable distance between mother and child, 
she now knows “grief ’s depths” (111). Differentiating herself from her own 
mother, she proclaims, “I am a mother like but also not like you” (111).  From 
the depths she discovers, “Each woman is within herself mother and daughter, 
bound by the same spell” (112).  She has been daughter to mother; daughter 
to father, home, and country; and daughter who becomes wife who becomes 
mother: “Our lives are an arc of flight: away, toward, away” (115). Coming in 
book reviews
278             volume 3,  number 1
waves of meaning, she now has full knowledge of what it is to fear the dis-
tance, what it is to dread the distance, what it is to accept the distance.
In the final section, New Poems, the speaker returns to her mother who is 
redefined through knowing. In “Fracture” she writes, “The mother knows 
her child’s story is one she cannot revise” (130). “Susquehanna” proffers final 
advice: each of must “decode the future assembling on the water” (140).


The Face of Water: New and Selected Poems

252       volume 3, number 1
The word pops out of my mouth, 
and I tongue it again, gratefully
as I shake out the baggie, gently
and drop into my jewelry box, 
her latest pale white nugget, pillow-planted.
Five years collecting calcium and hope,
grown in the dark, 
traded in for loonies or twoonies now,
to bite off dreams with price tags at the mall.
Still I sugar their sleep
with dreams kept beneath my pillow,
wishes for Popularity, Beauty and Success
 yet not too soon, or too much
 for some days
 I am also the Evil Queen
 biting the green apple of envy, sealing 
 up the glass coffin
 in a double burial: my youth, their future.  
I drop the lid, with a thud.
But all night something shines
like coins slipped under cotton,
a shimmer on the ceiling
Reliquary
laurie kruk
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 journal of the motherhood initiative       253 
while the real girl, across the hall, 
like her older sister,
slays dragons in her sleep.
Tomorrow, she will grin with a gap,
a jingle in her jeans.
But tonight, in sleep 
I am pushing her out again, 
lavender-grey, perfect, whole:
thus believers maintain the illusion of 
sainted lives, Madonna with Child: 
our legends of ourselves


Reliquary

Quaggin Harkin, Alison

book reviews
272             volume 3,  number 1
entrenched beliefs around mothering within the Western world—including 
beliefs I embrace even though they may be incorrect. I suspect other readers 
may feel similar discomfort at times. The anxiety to “get it right” tends to 
make us tighten our grip on old, known beliefs even as it drives new discov-
eries.
For Horwitz, resistance is a hopeful act that can effect change. While 
culture influences mothering practices, mothers also influence the cultural 
construction of mothering. Horwitz is correct that her interviewees are not 
passive, but neither are they fully empowered. They must finds ways of sup-
porting what they determine to be the general good in mothering and resist 
external attempts to undermine their practice. The path of mothering is a 
continual dialogue that can foster historical understanding of who we are as 
mothers, how we fit into the present, and how we may best prepare for the 
future.
Respectful  dialogue acknowledges a wide range of mothering practices and 
Horwitz’s book is an essential part of that dialogue.  Through the Maze of 
Motherhood will be of interest to readers across the disciplines of psychology, 
maternal studies, women’s studies, and perinatal healthcare.
Motherhood Online
Michelle Moravec, ed. 
Newcastle upon Tyne, uk: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011.
Reviewed by Alison Quaggin Harkin
 In her preface to Motherhood Online, a collection of essays on the experiences 
of motherhood in a virtual environment, editor Michelle Moravec explains 
that the book “explores the thousands of mommy groups that populate the 
web,” whether these are “centered on region, religion, race, or some other 
aspect of identity” (x). The contributors, too, are from diverse world regions 
and disciplines, including communications, history, sociology, anthropology, 
English, psychology, and medicine. The topics addressed are varied: expect-
ant motherhood, group support and conflict, teen motherhood, mothering 
children with special needs or rare medical conditions, myths of motherhood, 
fathers’ participation in online communities, assisted pregnancy and surro-
gate motherhood, adoption, child-rearing practices, and transnational issues. 
At the same time, the underlying themes of community support and the ways 
book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative             273 
in which experience is created, recreated, co-created, and narrated give this 
volume a satisfying cohesiveness. The book shows how mothers (and others) 
in virtual communities, as in “real” life, tend to structure reality “in the form 
of stories and narratives that they tell others and themselves” (Peter Buzzi 
and Claudia Megele 233). Contributor Barbara L. Ley, for example, discusses 
how mobile devices, social networking sites, and blogs have changed online 
communication, but she stresses that the ability to participate in storytelling 
remains key.
The book is divided into three general sections: Theoretical Perspectives, 
Case Studies, and Blogs and Community.  The first section provides a theory-
grounded discussion of the kinds of support and communities women may 
find on “mommy sites,” how these may change as communication technolo-
gies expand, and how women adapt to such change. For instance, Lorin Bas-
den Arnold examines how the theory of relational dialectics can be applied 
to an examination of online communities, as these allow users to experience 
temporal distance and autonomy, along with diversity, varied points of view, 
and a sense of connection with others. Two other essays, one by Michelle 
Moravec and another by Patricia Drentea and Jennifer Moren Cross, focus 
on the challenges of sustaining a sense of community online when groups of 
users expand or evolve.  Similarly, Sarah Leavitt offers a thorough discussion 
of how the “hard work of disagreeing” in online communities may, in fact, 
lead to deeper bonds among participants (69).  
In the second section, Case Studies, authors examine specific types of online 
resources and communities related to mothering and/or parenting.  While all 
the essays provide valuable insights into online experiences, readers are likely 
to turn first to those dealing with issues most immediately relevant to them. 
As the mother of a child with autism, I was drawn to Denise Barnum Bur-
gess’s “Closing the Refrigerator: Maternal Empowerment and the MySpace 
Autie Mommies,” in which she explains the ways in which “autie moms” may 
accept dominant narratives of “heroic” mothers who have “a singular focus 
on using power for their children alone rather than using power to bolster 
their own status as well” (122). I was cheered by Burgess’s point that women 
may, tentatively, also work toward a more gynocentric vision of motherhood 
through their narratives and participation in online groups.
Other essays in this section include Jenna Vinson’s insightful exploration 
of young mothers’ narratives that subvert and challenge “expert” opinions and 
stories on teen motherhood, and Liesbeth Wiering’s discussion of the ways 
in which a virtual environment can provide a community for parents of chil-
dren with a rare medical condition.  Several other contributors examine gen-
dered differences and similarities in parents’ use of online communities and 
resources (Ellen Brady; Curtis B. Livesay), as well as sites focused on assisted 
book reviews
274             volume 3,  number 1
reproduction issues (Venetia Kantsa; Michelle McGowan) or adoption (Peter 
Buzzi and Claudia Megele; Todd Lindley).
In the final section, Blogs and Community, Lynne M. Webb and Brittney 
S. Lee’s opening essay provides a general overview of blogging and introduces 
the ways in which blogging can create and maintain supportive communities 
among mothers. Other authors focus on blogs for specific groups of mothers: 
Marceline Thompson-Hayes discusses mothers of autistic children and how 
they use blogging to form supportive communities, while Yahui Zhang pro-
vides insight into how Chinese women’s blogging can influence their mother-
ing practices and permit them to reflect “on their relational self not only as 
mothers, but also as wives, daughters, daughters-in-law, career women, and 
friends” (275).  
The closing essay, “Transnational Surrogacy, E-Motherhood, and Nation 
Building” by Sayantani Dasgupta and Shamita Das Dasgupta, I found par-
ticularly thought-provoking and troubling, as it not only details the potential 
benefits of online communities centred on mothering and/or parenting, but 
their limits and possibly negative aspects. The authors provide specific ex-
amples as they explain that, while bonds and relationships certainly may form 
among Western intended parents (ips) who use blogging sites about Indian 
surrogacy, some ips also tend to practice “othering” of Indian surrogates.  The 
authors found, for instance, that several photos on blogging sites depicted 
pregnant “belly shots” of anonymous, faceless surrogates. While remaining 
sensitive toward ips and their desire to become parents, the authors conclude 
that “online motherhood by surrogacy is creating spaces for support and com-
munity while simultaneously reinforcing imperialist patterns of colonialism 
and commercialism” (303).
Motherhood Online contributors’ ability to address a variety of complex is-
sues critically and thoroughly makes this text helpful for anyone who wishes 
to learn about the many ways of experiencing motherhood—and oneself—in 
a virtual environment. Although the world of online interaction will continue 
to change as technology advances, the book’s focus on the human desire to 
communicate, share narratives, and form communities in an online world 
means it is likely to remain relevant for years to come.   


Motherhood Online

Cassidy, Tanya M.

Mothers, Milk and Money: Maternal Corporeal Generosity, Social Psychological Trust, and Value in Human Milk Exchange

Hawkins, Jenna

Canadian Parental Benefits Program: Challenging or Supporting the Gendered Organization?

Gonsalves, Louise

 journal of the motherhood initiative             267 
Book Reviews
Urgent Message from Mother:
Gather the Women, Save the World
Jean Shinoda Bolen.
York Beach, Maine: Conari Press, 2005. 
Reviewed by Louise Gonsalvez
In Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World author Jean 
Shinoda Bolen calls for women to rise collectively against the patriarchal ma-
chine that is leading us towards environmental collapse, social chaos, and 
mass conflict. She asserts that the patriarchal model is fraught with false as-
sumptions about the nature of humankind and, like Malcolm Gladwell, be-
lieves there are tipping points in the raising of human consciousness that can 
alter the course of history. 
Bolen’s argument is convincing, compassionate, and compelling. She re-
minds us that the human spirit is full of creative genius and claims that the 
Sacred Feminine can offer humane solutions to political, social, economic, 
and environmental entanglements. To support her claim, she cites numerous 
accounts of successful women’s movements and women leaders, whose acts 
of courage and resistance have given rise to overwhelming social, economic, 
and/or environmental change.
Bolen argues effectively for the advantages of feminist perspective, praxis, 
and political leadership.  She notes the gendered nature of many socio-eco-
nomic and environmental issues (for example, domestic violence, poverty, 
and political leadership) and identifies the advantages of bringing feminist 
approaches such as collaboration, dialogue, and talking circles to real world 
problems. She invokes the first time the people of the world saw the beautiful 
planet earth from space and how that event catalyzed a paradigm shift—at 
book reviews
268             volume 3,  number 1
Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, and National-
ism illuminates how meanings and realities of motherhood are shaped by var-
ious cultural, economic, and political forces.  This collection of essays is struc-
tured around three areas of inquiry: ideologies of racial difference, narratives 
of personhood, and socio-legal parameters of motherhood. The book consists 
of qualitative sociological and anthropological research projects that present 
the diverse voices of homeless mothers, adoptive mothers, surrogate moth-
ers, single mothers, mothers of children with disabilities—in other words, 
mothers who do not meet normative expectations and are often perceived as 
existing outside of the cultural ideal of “good” mothering.  Taken together, the 
essays explore motherhood as a socially constructed and historically situated 
institution, showing us how “mother” itself becomes a highly contested and 
ideologically loaded term.
Part one addresses motherhood as it is affected by cultural sets of ideas 
about race. The common theme running through the essays written by Chris-
tine Ward Gailey, Heléna Ragoné, and France Widdance Twine is that of 
redefinitions of kinship. In her well-researched piece, Gailey critically inter-
rogates narratives of United States adoption and analyzes how they are en-
gendered by a nexus of race, gender, class, and nationality. Ragoné discusses 
the growing practice of gestational surrogacy and its role in transfiguring no-
tions of race while at the same time challenging “natural” aspects of reproduc-
tion (65).  Twine’s essay focuses on the experiences of race and motherhood 
by white birth mothers of black children in British multiracial families. Twine 
reveals that mothers develop agentic antiracist strategies in response to a logic 
once, Mother Earth was recognized as a living, borderless entity.
Bolen’s work lacks a strong theoretical framework, comprehensive second-
ary references, and empirical tables, but Urgent Message for Mother conveys a 
powerful message that socio-economic issues must be addressed in the inter-
est of peace and environmental sustainability.
Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood:
Race, Class, Sexuality, and Nationalism
Heléna Ragoné and France Winddance Twine, eds.
New York: Routledge, 2000.
Reviewed by Veronika Novoselova
