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

Wilson, Camille

Z. McCoy, Shuntay

English

Poverty and African American Mothers : Countering Biased Ideologies, Representations and the Politics of Containment

Dunlop, Rishma

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering          339 
Estelle unbuttons her blouse, lays my
hand on the jagged scar where her breast 
used to be. She wants me to tell her she is 
still beautiful.
I feel her heart beneath the ribbed wall
milk-veined softness knifed into a cavern.
She tells me her husband has not been able
to look at it yet, this place on a woman’s body,
nuzzled and suckled and cupped by infants
and lovers.
Her gesture recalls my
first lover, his teenage body, long six foot 
stretch, lean limbs, every rib visible, the
surgical scar after the mending of a collapsed 
lung. I used to breathe into that curved mark
above his heart, lay my head against its pulse.
Three decades later, I realize my lover
has that same six foot stretch of bones, that
tender ribcage.
How we return, full cycle, to first love.
While ashes that rise meet ashes that fall
we become the world for a while, the rose
of each lung blooming inside.
All this contained in the memory of my hand
on Estelle’s heart, her absent breast, sweet flesh 
excised into terrible beauty. I tell her she is beautiful,
Rishma Dunlop
Memento Mori
340            Volume 11, Number 1
Rishma Dunlop
despite her husband’s averted gaze, that she will continue
to be loved.
It can not be otherwise.
For her mother has named her with human faith.
Estelle, her name a star.


Memento Mori

Gamber, reviewed by Cayo

348         Volume 11, Number 1
Book Reviews
Double Lives: 
Writing and Motherhood
Shannon Cowan, Fiona Tinwei Lam, and Cathy Stonehouse, eds.  
Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008
Reviewed by Cayo Gamber
Books on writing often discuss the competing demands made upon a writer, 
from the groceries that must be purchased to the tax papers that must be filed. 
Among the day-to-day demands that vie with the writer’s efforts to attend to 
her writing, however, none are more pressing than the demands associated with 
parenting. As this collection of essays by writing mothers makes clear, children 
often win out over writing. A baby’s wide-eyed delight, a child’s fever of 104 
degrees, a daughter’s art project, a son’s late-night call will interrupt the writer 
at her craft and almost invariably take precedence over her work.
The contest between the call to parent and the call to write has not been 
adequately discussed, as the editors of Double Lives assert:
Even today, writers who become mothers are more or less exiled from 
literary community by default, unless they hide or suppress their 
parenting life. Many famous mother writers avoid talking about their 
mothering in public. Despite the reading public’s fascination with the 
writing process, the endless books of interviews with writers, revela-
tions about the writing life, books about how to write or become a 
writer, almost nothing gets said about the effect of raising children 
on writing and how writer-mothers have coped. (xviii)
This varied and compelling collection of personal narratives analyzes the 
impact of motherhood on one’s writing life and one’s life as a mother. 
Key words and phrases—mother, writer, subsumed, struggle, ambivalence, 
joy, surrender, longed-for quiet, breasts, hands, mess, sleeping, sleep-deprived, 
words, no words, family, career, tea, caffeine, time—echo across these narratives. 
In “Elements,” Fiona Timwei Lam insists,
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        349 
Book Reviews
[t]o write, mothers have to combat the continual erasure and sub-
mersion that mothering entails: the submersion of needs, ambitions, 
identity, and the erasure of privacy and personal boundaries. To re-
appear as a writer required a carving out of a mental and emotional 
space for oneself through time away from mothering, to be free to 
dream, read, and then eventually write, eventually building the kind 
of momentum that will drive a project to completion. (89)
Each of these mother-writers/writer-mothers describes the waves of sub-
mersion into motherhood and emersion into one’s own writerly skin that are 
required to find the time and place to reflect, write, revise, and, finally, submit 
their work for publication. 
This gathering of writers is as wide-ranging as their interests and includes 
women who are established writers, newly published, academics, freelancers, 
working class, privileged, poets, novelists, single mothers, partnered, mothers of 
one, mothers of six, biological mothers, non-biological mothers, heterosexual, 
lesbian, and ethnically diverse mothers. All the writers included in the volume 
are honest, insightful, and inquiring. For example, Cori Howard humorously 
describes her current life as a writer-mother:
Mostly, I’m miserable because I screamed at my son and at my husband. 
The story will get done. It just does. I feel sick that I screamed at my 
son to stop singing. I want him to sing. Just not when I’m working. 
Sadly, I’m sure I’ll yell at him again. My husband knows I’ll yell at 
him again and pretty soon, I’ll be yelling at my daughter. So when 
my kids grow up, they’ll think of writers as intense, spacey types who 
spend a lot of time staring at computer screens and yelling. Good. I 
don’t want my kids to be writers. It’s no way to make a living. (34)
Theresa Shea, on the other hand, observes that her efforts to write and 
to parent can be complementary: 
Experience has taught me I do my worst mothering when I have 
other plans. It seems the children demand even more when they 
sense I’ve removed myself from them rather than surrendered to 
them. But experience has shown me that I parent better when I’m 
writing, because then I don’t feel like I’m “just a mother.” It’s a dicey 
combination, juggling the needs to care well for my children and to 
write. (120)
Most striking is the common concern that underpins these narratives: 
a general anxiety about the value accorded to writing, the value accorded to 
mothering, and the writer-mother’s overarching desire to affirm her worth 
through publishing and parenting.


Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering          315 
In the library, among the stacks and card catalogues 
with tiny wooden drawers of secret worlds,
I’m in love with transport, the gilt pages
of runaway children, women in heavy silks.
At home in my room, the stacks of overdue books
beside my bed harden into steppes. 
My eyes cross them like locomotives carrying 
Lara and Yuri through the Urals of Dr. Zhivago, 
ice crystals on windows. Nabokov’s blue butterflies
flit across the room as I read Montaigne, 
the poems of Verlaine, mother’s Chatelaine. 
Outside, the sounds of traffic flow
into the night and in my mind 
the rivers of the St. Lawrence, and the Volga
intermingle their waters. I waltz
the waltz from War and Peace amidst the clang
of closed lockers in the hallways of Beaconsfield High.
In the kitchen, mother hums through a clatter of dishes
and reports of massacres in Cambodia.
In the sharp smell of Chekhov’s cherry orchards I turn 
the pages, volume by volume, to stay my departure.
Choreography
Rishma Dunlop
316            Volume 11, Number 1


Choreography

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering          313 
When my parents go out,
I reach into mother’s
bureau drawer,
the top one
as tall as me
and wind myself in the white 
silk scarf father bought her in Paris,
and roll on her Revlon Cherries
in the Snow lipstick.
Then, I dab perfume on strap lines
that cut across my brown skin
like trails of fighters
curving away from the cauterized part      
of Viet Nam
they just firebombed
on the news
in the family room.
Cherries in the Snow
Rishma Dunlop
314            Volume 11, Number 1


Cherries in the Snow

J. Peters, Carolyn

"Do the Workers Think We Don't Have a Brain in Our Heads?" Qualitative Study about Mothers' and their Social Workers' Perspectives about Social Services

Gurr, Barbara

McGary, Nikki

Restricted Access: The Intersections of Reproductive Health, Rights and Policy for Minors and Native American Women

Bonia, reviewed by Kimberly

Another Mornign : Voices of Truth and Hope from Mothers with Cancer

Norat, reviewed by Gisela

350        Volume 11, Number 1
Book Reviews
Wishing: Diaries of a Teen Pregnancy
Kim McLeod
Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2007
Reviewed by Nancy Bird LaChance and Sarah LaChance Adams
Wishing: Diaries of a Teen Pregnancy by Kim McLeod is a book of diary entries 
written over a period of twenty-eight months. Near the end of the book, read-
ers are spirited forward eight months into the next year, which includes twelve 
entries over five months, followed by an epilogue of sorts. McLeod’s pregnancy 
begins halfway through the book, quite late in a work about expecting a baby. 
Further, the author does not explain how birth control—she obtains birth 
control pills at great effort—fails her. Regrettably, the narrative unfolds in bits 
and pieces, with unwelcome gaps.
Most unsettling is McLeod’s transformation from a loving, caring teen 
mom of deep religious faith into every parent’s nightmare. The entries shift 
abruptly from “She was very quiet in church today she [sic] has been since 
we first brought her. Praise the Lord for all the beauty of Lana. Love Lana’s 
Mommy” to “I have fallen back into partying. I drank beer and smoked too 
much, I can hardly remember. I know I had sex with someone, but I don’t really 
know them.” What follows are eight pages that describe a wild roller-coaster 
ride of four months, ending with McLeod “staying at a friend’s house near the 
mall. They have a cot in the basement I can use…. They let Mack stay over a 
few times. He’s been coming into my bed. I wasn’t able to say no.” As readers, 
we found ourselves identifying more with McLeod’s frustrated parents than 
with McLeod herself.
The book is marked by poor grammar, misspellings, slang, and profanity. 
Scrupulous editing would have ensured the book’s accessibility to all readers, 
including students, tweens, teens, and their parents. Readers are left wishing 
for interpretive depth, struggling to find meaning in the mangled pieces of 
this painful puzzle.
Whatever Floats Your Boat: Perspectives on 
Motherhood 
Maryanne Pope and Shannon Lyons 
Calgary, Alberta: Pink Gazelle Productions
Reviewed by Gisela Norat
Sudden widowhood at age 32 leaves Maryanne Pope without her soul mate 
and husband. At 36, she decides to tackle the nagging “little inner voice” 
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        351 
Book Reviews
urging her to hurry up and have children. Not prepared to become a single 
mother, but also afraid to “miss the boat,” Pope literally embarks with eleven 
women friends on a weekend-long houseboat expedition on a lake in British 
Columbia. Their mission is to talk candidly about motherhood in the hope 
that the conversation will help Pope sort out her feelings. Not surprisingly, 
the participants in this documentary film respond with heartfelt joy and deep 
pain to the subject of motherhood. 
Although ethnically and racially homogeneous, the group represents 
a myriad of life situations. On the trip there are women with and without 
children—either by choice or circumstance—including single, widowed, and 
divorced mothers parenting alone, married women with traditional families, and 
remarried women with biological and adopted children. The group discussions 
are engaging and show how women connect with the subject of motherhood. 
This all-female gathering in a support group, cushioned by the relative safety 
of friendship, demonstrates how empowering and nurturing a community of 
women can be—and frankly, to judge by the activities on board and off the 
boat, much more fun, economical, and expedient than professional therapy. 
Ultimately, the issue of how self-esteem and personal fulfillment is connected 
to bearing or nor bearing a child can only be resolved individually. What is 
shared, however, is the experience of societal pressure that mandates women 
for biological reproduction. 
Despite the inevitable tears shed on tape, the documentary is uplifting 
and inspirational. It confirms the need for connection, especially when women 
face life-transforming issues, such as whether or not to become a mother. The 
documentary would serve well in women’s studies courses, women’s public 
health programs, women’s discussion groups, and parent planning groups. 
It is not suitable for church-affiliated groups, given its treatment of married 
women choosing not to bear children, women choosing divorce, or, in one 
case, abortion. 
The dvd includes a facilitated discussion session, titled “Perspectives on 
Motherhood,” which presents the voices of Asian, Black, Latino, and Caucasian 
women of different ages, walks of life, and experiences with motherhood. This 
session builds on the group’s common viewing of Whatever Floats Your Boat and 
gives the diverse group of women an opportunity to react to the documentary 
and share their views on its treatment of motherhood. The video package also 
includes a supplementary resource kit, with a synopsis and rationale for the 
documentary, a variety of interviews conducted by Pope that capture other 
women’s stories of motherhood, the transcription of a group discussion of six 
women’s reactions to the documentary, lesson and assignment ideas, pre- and 
post-viewing questions for discussion, and an annotated resource list. Whatever 
Floats Your Boat: Perspectives on Motherhood is sure to get women talking.


Whatever Floats Your Boat: Perspectives on Motherhood

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