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

Buller, reviewed by Rachel Epp

book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative            239 
Ultimately this is a book that addresses a fundamental dilemma: how to 
carve out an intellectual life—which appears to require a certain ascetic sen-
sibility—from within the midst of an active family life. Ironically, Dickson’s 
third pregnancy and the creation of new life are catalysts for intellectual dis-
It will come as no surprise to readers of this journal that motherhood and 
the maternal body for years fell short of serious consideration in feminist 
art and art history. Perhaps because artists and historians alike viewed the 
themes as sentimental or the role of motherhood as constricting, prior to 
the 1990s only Mary Kelly and a small handful of other artists successfully 
bridged art and motherhood to critical acclaim. Andrea Liss’s book, then, 
is a welcome and high-quality contribution to a recently burgeoning field, 
primarily for the ways in which it expands the discussion of art and the 
maternal. Liss not only re-examines bodies of work by well-known mother-
artists and highlights the work of lesser-known artists, she also challenges 
stereotypes of maternal sentimentality by exploring themes of trauma, loss, 
and sensuality, and broadens the scope of the discussion to include art that 
addresses “maternal care,” the invisible domestic labour so often performed 
by women and mothers. 
As an opening, Liss presents an extensive and elegant re-reading of Mary 
Kelly’s famous Post-Partum Document (1973-79). Her positioning of Mierle 
Laderman Ukeles’s “maintenance art” as maternal, while initially surprising, 
is well argued and greatly enriches the term. Liss’s best chapter, “Mamas Out 
of Place,” details work that pushes against the boundaries of maternal con-
ventions, bringing much-deserved attention to a number of artists along the 
way. Ellen McMahon’s extraordinary artist’s book, No New Work (1993), for 
example, directly responds to the academic repression of her double identi-
ties as artist/faculty and mother, while Judith Hopkins’s 1994 activist project, 
Stretching It: Surviving on AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), 
chronicles the degradation of mothers who seek governmental assistance yet 
refuse victim status, giving voice to “maternal acts that defy passivity and 
enforced poverty” (83). Photographer Gail Rebhan explores her sons’ experi-
ences of learning about gender and race, and Los Angeles artist collective 
m.a.m.a. (Mother Artists Making Art) intervenes in public spaces to bring 
attention to the cultural politicization of breastfeeding. 
Feminist Art and the Maternal 
Andrea Liss
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. 
Reviewed by Rachel Epp Buller
book reviews
240           volume 1,  number 1
While most of the chapters work together to build a cohesive whole, the 
chapter on filmmaker Ngozi Onwurah struggles to fit in. The disjuncture 
between still and filmic representations seems marked here, and the verbal 
descriptions of scenes from the film prove difficult to follow or visualize. 
A unique strength of the book is the way in which Liss weaves personal 
narrative into scholarly prose. The short “interlude” on the maternal care giv-
en by her ten-year-old son during her battle with breast cancer is particularly 
compelling. The transitions between the two voices are not always seamless, 
but this blend of the personal and the political, so to speak, will make her art 
historical discussions accessible even to lay readers.
Fiona Nelson begins this new book on mothering by referencing the insights 
of noted writer Ursula LeGuin, who argues evocatively for an understanding 
of sexual difference that celebrates women’s unique experiences, understand-
ings, and ways of knowing within a broader patriarchal culture that histori-
cally has devalued women. This, too, is the nature of Nelson’s work: her “other 
room” is the cultural space of the new mother who struggles to articulate and 
claim a  maternal identity within a broader social environment that still does 
not fully value the act of mothering.
Nelson’s study, undertaken in the early 2000s, involved in-depth interviews 
with 53 Alberta-based mothers, all of whom were either pregnant or rela-
tively new mothers; novitiates, in other words, in the “mommy club.”  Central 
to her work is the desire to explore and map what she terms the culture of 
motherhood: the symbols, rituals, stories, norms, values, and initiation rites 
that mark the cultural space of the mother. Significantly, these characteristics 
are not externally-defined, but rather, self-defined: articulated and experi-
enced by mothers themselves in a process of meaning-making that Nelson 
considers essential to shaping mothers’ conceptual identities. Indeed, Nelson’s 
work suggests that the culture of motherhood is a necessary space for affirma-
tion and celebration and integral to women’s understandings of themselves 
as mothers. At the same time, however, her research also illustrates tensions, 
fractures, and exclusions. While Nelson’s interviewees were able to identify 
the parameters of the culture of motherhood, less than half claimed this cul-
ture as a “room of their own” (98). Mothers reported judgement, stigmatiza-
tion, and conflict on a variety of issues.  Such tensions demonstrate that even 
In the Other Room:
Entering the Culture of Motherhood
Fiona Nelson.
Black Point, ns: Fernwood, 2009.
Reviewed by Sonja Boon


English

Feminist Art and the Maternal

Hanser, Suzanne B.

Learning How to Die: Lessons from My Son

Kasdorf, Julia Spicher

 journal of the motherhood initiative            127 
I can’t say his name but I still see his fingers
holding onto a sheet of paper, trembling 
until he spread and pressed them onto the table 
in that small room of bad light and bad air 
in a place called the Cathedral of Learning.  
Female students complained:  not his words, 
but the ferocity of his voice, how his face 
suddenly shone with sweat when he spoke. 
That fall I encouraged them all to write 
their sadness or their happiness.  I didn’t try 
to complicate their language or smarten up 
their ideas.  That fall everything seemed simple 
and stupid.  I bought spent asters from buckets 
on the street and walked aimlessly on rare days 
of blue, lucid sky like the skies in Oklahoma
where he grew up dodging belt buckles, poor 
enough to enlist before Kuwait.  His name lost
but not the poem where he sits with an officer 
in an open jeep somewhere in the desert 
as the officer gripes about his wife then pulls out
a pistol and shoots at a camel lumbering by.  
When I read the news, I imagined him bloody 
Elegy Against—, Ten Years Later
julia spicher kasdorf
128           volume 1,  number 1
in a claw foot bathtub back home.  Surely 
in poor Oklahoma the tubs are ordinary, but 
how could a plain tub hold his body?   I want 
the graceful curve, white and smooth and cool 
and tender against his large, hard shoulders.  
He said he promised the Army never to speak of—
I didn’t know what to believe, there in my office
I just tried to encourage him to write, as if—
Dan.  Was it Dan or Dave?  How do you guys get 
such excellent posture?  I once asked him.  
They train you not to feel pain, he said, gazing 
straight into my eyes.  
julia spicher kasdorf


Elegy Against—, Ten Years Later

Dorion, Fabienne

Widows, Mothers, Activists: Indigenous Achí Women’s Experiences of La Violencia in Rabinal, Guatemala

Boon, reviewed by Sonja

book reviews
240           volume 1,  number 1
While most of the chapters work together to build a cohesive whole, the 
chapter on filmmaker Ngozi Onwurah struggles to fit in. The disjuncture 
between still and filmic representations seems marked here, and the verbal 
descriptions of scenes from the film prove difficult to follow or visualize. 
A unique strength of the book is the way in which Liss weaves personal 
narrative into scholarly prose. The short “interlude” on the maternal care giv-
en by her ten-year-old son during her battle with breast cancer is particularly 
compelling. The transitions between the two voices are not always seamless, 
but this blend of the personal and the political, so to speak, will make her art 
historical discussions accessible even to lay readers.
Fiona Nelson begins this new book on mothering by referencing the insights 
of noted writer Ursula LeGuin, who argues evocatively for an understanding 
of sexual difference that celebrates women’s unique experiences, understand-
ings, and ways of knowing within a broader patriarchal culture that histori-
cally has devalued women. This, too, is the nature of Nelson’s work: her “other 
room” is the cultural space of the new mother who struggles to articulate and 
claim a  maternal identity within a broader social environment that still does 
not fully value the act of mothering.
Nelson’s study, undertaken in the early 2000s, involved in-depth interviews 
with 53 Alberta-based mothers, all of whom were either pregnant or rela-
tively new mothers; novitiates, in other words, in the “mommy club.”  Central 
to her work is the desire to explore and map what she terms the culture of 
motherhood: the symbols, rituals, stories, norms, values, and initiation rites 
that mark the cultural space of the mother. Significantly, these characteristics 
are not externally-defined, but rather, self-defined: articulated and experi-
enced by mothers themselves in a process of meaning-making that Nelson 
considers essential to shaping mothers’ conceptual identities. Indeed, Nelson’s 
work suggests that the culture of motherhood is a necessary space for affirma-
tion and celebration and integral to women’s understandings of themselves 
as mothers. At the same time, however, her research also illustrates tensions, 
fractures, and exclusions. While Nelson’s interviewees were able to identify 
the parameters of the culture of motherhood, less than half claimed this cul-
ture as a “room of their own” (98). Mothers reported judgement, stigmatiza-
tion, and conflict on a variety of issues.  Such tensions demonstrate that even 
In the Other Room:
Entering the Culture of Motherhood
Fiona Nelson.
Black Point, ns: Fernwood, 2009.
Reviewed by Sonja Boon
book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative            241 
as the culture of motherhood enables women to articulate otherwise silenced 
stories, it also engages in a silencing process of its own, marginalizing and 
devaluing mothering stories that deviate from assumed ideals. Troublingly, 
this struggle exists within the mother herself, who, according to Nelson, needs 
the affirmation of the culture of motherhood—that space that “gives lan-
guage, meaning, and affirmation to what would otherwise be unarticulated 
or inaccurately represented mothering experiences” (106)—even as she resists 
allying herself with that space. 
By examining the culture of motherhood, In the Other Room offers ben-
eficial insights into the complexities and contradictions of maternal iden-
tity. However, I also found myself wanting more. I would have liked to read 
a more nuanced examination of the relationships between the “culture of 
motherhood” and the “mothers’ club,” terms that Nelson uses interchange-
ably, but which would appear, from the interview excerpts included in the 
text, to have very different meanings. There were also some curious omis-
sions. In particular, I was surprised to find no reference at all to the December 
2000 Canadian parental leave legislation which guarantees a minimum of 35 
weeks of paid parental benefits through the Employment Insurance system. 
While this legislation is undeniably fraught with problems, it has neverthe-
less opened up the possibility of transforming the “other room”—not only by 
bringing mothering into the public eye, but also by offering the potential to 
broaden the membership base of the culture of motherhood to more formally 
recognize fathers as well as mothers. Given the anecdotal impact of this legis-
lation (as witnessed through the Vancouver Public Library’s Man in the Moon 
program for fathers and their young children, for example), it seems curious 
that Nelson’s work makes no mention of it at all.
Survival Notes for New Parents is one of the latest entries into the vast market 
of books for parents of newborns.  The book is organized into 100 entries, 
each of which includes a few paragraphs on parenting, an inspirational quota-
tion, and a bible verse.  Each item is self-contained within a pair of opposing 
pages.  Because of its format, the book does not require sequential reading.  
Each of the brief sections defines a scenario and provides suggestions for 
managing the particular situation.  The guide tackles a variety of topics, from 
Survival Notes for New Parents: 
An Inspiration for an Amazing Journey
Robert Stofel.  
Mahwah, nj: Paulist Press, 2009. 
Reviewed by  Sarai (“Sadie”) Harris Conway


In the Other Room: Entering the Culture of Motherhood

O'Sullivan, Jane

Spence, Rebecca

Beyond Hostile Borders: Re-negotiating the Gendered Embodiment
of Resistance and Agency in the film, Some Mother’s Son.

Mitchell, Margaret Lynn

Death and Rebirth: Healing with Eleusinian Mysteries of Ancient Greece

Weusten, Josje

An Attack on a Romanticized Discourse on Motherhood? Representations of Murderous Mothers in Dutch Novels

McElroy, Theresa

Spittal, Patricia

Atim, Stella

Tebere, Lillian

Muyinda, Herbert

Mothering in a Time of Conflict: Acholi Women’s Experience of Child Rearing in the Displacement Camps of Northern Uganda

McGadney, Brenda Faye

Nibewun-Tarko, Asibi

Woman Displaced in Conflict in Northern Ghana: Voices of the Konkombass