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

Mullings, Delores V.

English

Temporary Mothering: Greiving the Loss of Foster Children When They Leave

Smith, Katherine

 journal of the motherhood initiative            277 
katherine smith
History
A young girl whispers on her cell phone at night,
her voice rising, falling in the arc that spans 
reason, anger, grief until she puts the phone
under her pillow so that no one hears her 
weep. From my bedroom I hear her cries in dark
where no one sleeps. Once we painted her room
a pink so pale it’s invisible at night. Wind rustles 
bare branches of the apple tree. Hours before
when I drove her home, she talked about biology, 
new shoes, a book she was reading. We walked 
into the house beneath stars that pinned endless dark to the sky
like the posters I’d helped her fix to the ceiling. When I was a child,
each night I pulled pillows over my head to keep from hearing 
my parents’ voices and the sound of the television’s terrible news
turned up loud to muffle the sound of their fighting. Tonight 
I slip outside to breathe in the cold bark of the apple trees. 
In the dark, my daughter’s voice follows me.


History

Norat, Gisela

Up in Arms! A Brief Women’s History of Militancy in Latin America

Dear-Healey, reviewed by Sally

book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative            247 
auditorium at the end of the concert, he showed great joy throughout most 
of the musical excursion.
What Cameron helped me discover is that I had missed the whole point of 
Bandurina’s book. Voices of Our Children is not about spectators or performers. 
In fact, it is about the “interest” my two-year old son displayed at the con-
cert. Cameron showed a deep interest in music which Bandurina discusses in 
great detail. As she states in her introduction, “the genesis of this book was 
prompted by my strong belief that a child’s interest in music is the key to 
success in music education” (7). The stories told in conversational dialogue 
throughout Bandurina’s book illustrate this concept. Readers are given nu-
merous insightful tips to generate, maintain, and nourish the musical abilities 
of children.
Jessica, the leading voice throughout the book (and proud mother of Alex-
andra), seeks out the expertise of music school director Elizabeth McDonald, 
whom she meets on a playground one warm June day. In her quest for musical 
knowledge, guided by McDonald in conversations concerning musical nan-
nies to forbidden fruit, Jessica discusses different musical figures. Motivat-
ing, uplifting, positive, and sometimes sad, the themes that emerge from the 
people met on this musical journey showcase the importance of parents in the 
musical lives of their children.
A former principal of a music school, Tatiana Bandurina’s expertise in the 
field of musical training is evident throughout her work. Her inner strength 
and passion for music shape this important book.
In Loving the Alien, poet Laurie Kruk invites readers to both find and lose 
themselves in the paradoxical character of living and loss, nature and technol-
ogy, the mundane and the magical.
The volume is divided into six sections: Loving the Alien, Vaudevillians of 
Time, Iceberg Rider, When Her Thighs Were Perfect, Personal Effects, and 
the Mother Robe. Each section offers a wide range of poems sure to appeal 
to the novice critic and poetry connoisseur alike. Kruk’s ability to ground the 
reader in daily experience is uncanny. I identified with her feelings for a new 
lover, laughed outright at her comic rendering of a tube of toothpaste, shed 
a tear at “the sound of you, forgetting me,” and dreamt wistfully of what it 
Loving the Alien
Laurie Kruk.  
Sudbury: Your Scrivener Press, 2006.
Reviewed by Sally Dear-Healey
book reviews
248           volume 1,  number 1
might have been like to have a grandmother—or grandfather—to sit a spell 
at the local donut shop, to be able to go home again to indulge in “meatloaf 
and mashed.” 
Kruk’s haunting memories of yesterday and the stark realities of life are 
passionately evoked. Her insights into human behaviour and detailed de-
scriptions of events include traipsing through soil laden with moose dung 
and foraging through basements that smell of mold. Hers is an authentically 
fresh perspective.
 Readers are treated to richly descriptive verse that shows us how much we 
miss if we do not pay attention to life’s details, both small and large: tooth-
brushes and divorce, power interruptions and funerals, bikini stomachs and 
birth. We are reminded that “Weaving destiny from a web of tangled blood 
threads, / [we] already harbour the seeds of [our] own interior ocean”—that 
is, we are at once self and alien.


Loving the Alien

Edmonds, Regina M.

Transforming Loss into Action: Mothers from the Plaza de Mayo to Juarez, Mexico

Moura, Tatiana

Santos, Rita

Soares, Bárbara

Auto de Resistência: The Collective Action of Women Relatives of Victims of Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro

Herrick, Leigh

 journal of the motherhood initiative            75 
Who would’ve thought
things could have ever gotten this far
one line
following the next as steps in the night
follow their path in a particular pattern of sound
each witness may have heard might hear even now
a little differently: a sound with a shuffle or a muff a
click or a tap a hollow sound an echo perhaps whatever it was
remains inexact though the overall effect is still intact:
someone had been walking 
perhaps in numbers
maybe alone or: 
someone has been running here
perhaps alone
maybe in numbers
the sound itself
working over years 
working as the women worked
working all these years
in a world that kills children
in a world the women prepare them for
cooking eggs 
roasting
baking cakes 
hoping the suffering 
still drowning
in their tears
would one day come to an end
would one day free them from their kitchen vows 
where they made so many promises out loud:
Page 13 forward
leigh herrick
76           volume 1,  number 1
We will not be trite about this 
they wrote in blood
We will say what has happened here
2/22/03
after elie wiesel, night
Excerpts from night by Elie Wiesel, translated by Stella Rodway. Copyright ©1960 by 
MacGibbon & Kee. Copyright renewed © 1988 by The Collins Publishing Group.  Reprinted 
by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, llc.
leigh herrick


Page 13 forward

Prado, reviewed by Venus

book reviews
246           volume 1,  number 1
her mother and feels the need to honour her mother’s brand of “Britishness,” 
which she also recognizes in herself. Finally, although she loves her daughter 
unconditionally, Sutterfield experiences real “divisions” embodied in her in-
fant daughter’s unrelenting demands upon her mind and body that “besieged 
the very notion of self ” and threaten to efface it (14). 
Although this is primarily a personal text, it invokes a series of literary 
mothers. The writing and experience of women writers like the Brontes, Syl-
via Plath, and Angela Carter provide a context for Sutterfield’s own thoughts 
and experiences. Years of schooling did little to expand her understanding of 
motherhood and she lacked role models other than her own mother and the 
“litanies of self-denying, self mutilating saints, anchoresses, abbesses, nuns 
and holy women” (31). For Sutterfield, women writers elucidate the idea of 
motherhood and lead to the realization that the roles “of poet and mother 
were not so opposed” (111). 
At the end of her memoir, Sutterfield suggests that she has come to ac-
cept her complex identity, but this reviewer detects a lingering tension. One 
wonders whether she has been able to achieve a fully integrated life as poet 
and mother. 
Prior to writing this review, I attended my sixth-grade niece’s first music re-
cital. That evening, I could not help but notice the excited anticipation of 
both spectators and performers. I, too, was looking forward to seeing the mu-
sical principles discussed in Tatiana Bandurina’s Voices of Our Children: Stories 
of Music Education come alive. What I discovered, however, by evening’s end 
surprised me. 
While I was busy focusing on the spectators and performers, I did not 
realize that the person who would captivate and hold my interest throughout 
the evening would be my two-year old son Cameron. His delightful expres-
sions throughout the evening transformed my musical experience into one of 
pure wonderment. Cameron engaged in loud clapping as the audience ap-
plauded. He shrieked with delight at appropriate, and several inappropriate, 
musical moments. When he finally escaped from his seat, midway through 
the concert, his body moved in sequence to the music as he ran up and down 
the stage ramp. Although Cameron was kicking and screaming as we left the 
Voices of Our Children: Stories of Music Education 
Tatiana Bandurina.  
Richmond, bc: Quintecco Educational Products, 2008.
Reviewed by Venus Prado
book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative            247 
auditorium at the end of the concert, he showed great joy throughout most 
of the musical excursion.
What Cameron helped me discover is that I had missed the whole point of 
Bandurina’s book. Voices of Our Children is not about spectators or performers. 
In fact, it is about the “interest” my two-year old son displayed at the con-
cert. Cameron showed a deep interest in music which Bandurina discusses in 
great detail. As she states in her introduction, “the genesis of this book was 
prompted by my strong belief that a child’s interest in music is the key to 
success in music education” (7). The stories told in conversational dialogue 
throughout Bandurina’s book illustrate this concept. Readers are given nu-
merous insightful tips to generate, maintain, and nourish the musical abilities 
of children.
Jessica, the leading voice throughout the book (and proud mother of Alex-
andra), seeks out the expertise of music school director Elizabeth McDonald, 
whom she meets on a playground one warm June day. In her quest for musical 
knowledge, guided by McDonald in conversations concerning musical nan-
nies to forbidden fruit, Jessica discusses different musical figures. Motivat-
ing, uplifting, positive, and sometimes sad, the themes that emerge from the 
people met on this musical journey showcase the importance of parents in the 
musical lives of their children.
A former principal of a music school, Tatiana Bandurina’s expertise in the 
field of musical training is evident throughout her work. Her inner strength 
and passion for music shape this important book.
In Loving the Alien, poet Laurie Kruk invites readers to both find and lose 
themselves in the paradoxical character of living and loss, nature and technol-
ogy, the mundane and the magical.
The volume is divided into six sections: Loving the Alien, Vaudevillians of 
Time, Iceberg Rider, When Her Thighs Were Perfect, Personal Effects, and 
the Mother Robe. Each section offers a wide range of poems sure to appeal 
to the novice critic and poetry connoisseur alike. Kruk’s ability to ground the 
reader in daily experience is uncanny. I identified with her feelings for a new 
lover, laughed outright at her comic rendering of a tube of toothpaste, shed 
a tear at “the sound of you, forgetting me,” and dreamt wistfully of what it 
Loving the Alien
Laurie Kruk.  
Sudbury: Your Scrivener Press, 2006.
Reviewed by Sally Dear-Healey


Voices of Our Children: Stories of Music Education

Foisy, Christina

I Thought the Bones Would Do: Mourning Postpartum Suicide Through Collage Renovations

Raspin, Sally

Memories of the Post Natal Depression