Category Archives: life

Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty by Jacqueline Rose

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I started reading this book after a friend challenged me to mini book club. I thought it would be an interesting take on motherhood, perhaps essays, although the title calls itself an essay, singular, which reads, in hindsight, as pretentious as it is by no means an essay, and is, at the very least, essaysss. This books is basically theory, with some fairly dense analysis and criticism, but also some accessible hot takes and also slow burning takes mixed in.

The perks of this book are in some of the one liners, which I’ll share below. Her literary knowledge of mothers is vast and deep and fascinating. I found myself wanting to read all of the literary works she mentions, something that would take me years. I always (and will continue to) return to de Beauvoir and Rich.

The drawback of the book is only that it was more academic than I was hoping, something that might be reconciled by a more accurate title. I did not always understand the connection between mothering and immigration, although that connection is made frequently throughout the book. This was especially true for me in the first chapter. I found myself arguing—aren’t immigrant mothers the most sympathetic of all immigrants? This point felt underdeveloped to me throughout the book. Also, I felt that, based on my own experience, the dogged connection between breastfeeding and eroticism was a stretch and over-developed.

Even still, I appreciated the vulnerability and honesty throughout the entire book. It’s really like no other and tells a story of matrescence that is important, but rarely told. For me, motherhood has required me to be an almost entirely different person. Giving up such a huge sense of self is the sacrifice that seems too great and also unnecessary. Nothing could prepare me for how much I would change, would be forced to change in order to survive, and how that change felt inevitable, and necessary, and okay, and part of my life’s path and development, but also, in many ways, a jarring loss.

Overall, if you’re doing scholarship in motherhood, this is a must read. I may even be able to use some gems in my own scholarship, which is often, just adjacent, although I haven’t isolated any yet.

Here are a few lines/questions worth returning to:

“[W]hat are mothers being asked to carry, what forms of failure and injustice are they made accountable for, above all, in the modern Western world?” (37).

(Indeed, I have found the motherhood to be too demanding, asking too much, and unnecessarily so. With a better social network, motherhood could be vastly improved for (most) women.)

“We talk of a mother’s suffocating love. But the one in danger of being smothered by love might not be the infant but, under the weight of such a demand, the mother” (81).

(See above.)

“For several yars she has tried in vain to adapt to his point of view, to her mother-in-law’s exacting standards and ‘to all the unintelligible ritual with which they barricaded themselves against the alarming business of living’” (99).
(I just thought this was a profoundly accurate description of how I perceive some people to be doing life. (I have been wrong in my interpretations of this though.))

“[T]he child’s demands drive the mother to insane perfection; the inconsiderate child underscores the radical neglect of her own life” (187).
(I don’t think it can be helped.)

“‘[H]is implanting himself inside me; unreasonably and totally destroying the me I was’” (206).

Walking: One Step at a Time by Erling Kagge

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I found Walking: One Step at a Time by Erling Kagge on a list of pleasant books that help readers reconnect with nature. This was, indeed, a short and pleasant book. It lacks a plot and any overt organization, which, I have to admit bothered me a little. It bothered me in that I think it would have been improved by making overt organizational themes known throughout. The lack of (overt) organization could be considered a Scandinavian-style of prose writing, which has its benefits of course. I just thought this book was an exception. There are some great tidbits and great short narratives worth reading.

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

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This summer the boys and I read an abridged version of Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, written in 1864. I have to admit that this story was quite entertaining!

L is interested in the concept of Earth (as well as outer space), so I think he was interested in it because it was about the earth. A was not deeply interested, but did pick up on the fact that there was hot lava (!), which is a game we love to play.

I was interested in which aspects of the story were intentionally fantastical and which aspects were a result of changing beliefs and scientific information. What they thought about Earth 150+ years ago was dramatically different from what we now believe and understand.

The book had me asking questions like which is the deepest cave, and where is the deepest bore hole in the world. I also learned, from the Wikipedia page, that this book represents an early version of the idea of time travel, a literary concept that would be deeply expanded in the decades to follow (reaching it’s fulcrum, imho, in 1985 with the film Back to the Future). All in all it was a cool book, one that was gripping and suspenseful, but also interesting in both its literary and geological explorations.

Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit

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True to form, my “breezy summer beach read” was neither breezy nor read on a beach. Instead, I read Rebecca Solnit’s 2021 book, Orwell’s Roses. Solnit is an incredibly prolific author, and I like her work, but it is heavy and deep, and I rarely feel up to the task. However, at the beginning of the summer, this copy caught my eye at the local library, so I checked it out and read it whenever grading was complete and babies were asleep.

Here’s the copy that I read.

This book is about Orwell. Politics. The roses that he grew at his cottage. His interest in gardening and the natural world, and the hope that can be found there. Writ large, the book is about labor and freedom and politics and all of the themes of Orwell’s own writing, reflecting on labor and illness in Orwell’s time and also today. Solnit draws links between political strife that Orwell wrote about and the political strife of today.

As you know from my Instagram, I am interested in plants and gardening, especially flowers. I love the idea of growing food in whatever piece of earth one might inhabit. I like my own sheep, chickens, and flowers. I love to take a close look at a plant and watch it as it changes throughout the seasons and over the years. Evidently, Orwell and I have that in common. Unlike Orwell (and Solnit), however, I am less insightful and imaginative when it comes to politics, so I appreciated Solnit’s ability to meld the two together in ways that helped me learn and see these subjects all in a new light.

When I start reading Solnit, I think “This is mostly boring and only a little interesting,” and those thoughts are interspersed with with absolutely lovely prose and engaging content, and I love that about her writing. Reading Solnit is like the good feeling I have after I eat my vegetables and get my exercise. When it comes to nonfiction, Solnit is the realest deal. She also gives me permission to go on long tangents, and take up words and space, because it is meaningful to me, and trust that it will be meaningful to others as well.

What Remains by Carole Radziwill

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What a beautiful book! What Remains by Carole Radziwill is a completely unique book, taking the reader locations you’ve never been—could never go—but also to fully human and universally recognizable places.

It’s no secret that the Real Housewives series are a guilty pleasure, and I always found Carole to be a fun, tell-it-like-it-is, type of “character,” so I thought this book might be decent, but it’s better than that!

A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love

The book takes the reader to the poor gravel roads and streams of New York state, to the haphazard suburbs, to a chaotic, but close family life, to the rush of a bold new career in a city, to war zones, to falling in love (without cliché), and forging deep friendships with “America’s royalty.” Readers see that we all ache, love, suffer, and feel the joy of the sun on our skin and the wind in our hair universally. The life she lives once she’s seriously dating and married to her husband Anthony is (emotionally) much like other everyday relationships, except with better food, clothing, apartments, travel, and lovely places to stay. The reader might be surprised to find that this group of “elites” are thoughtful, frugal, playful, stressed, sometimes uncertain. Aren’t we all?

Radziwill has lived an extraordinary life, and so while this is a memoir, and a genre with which readers might be familiar, it’s is so completely unique in the extraordinary events and circumstances she’s survived. She loses her three closest people in the span of three weeks. Maybe she has survivor’s guilt, but I hope she doesn’t. I hope she is exploring what to do with this big, bold, beautiful life she gets to live. While there is a tight and lovely metaphor about fortune threaded throughout, which works on several levels, the reader leaves the book thinking, “Anything is possible. Anything can happen. Now, what am I going to do with this big bold, beautiful life?”

I read every word and, almost to prove a point, she thanks her bff and sister-in-law, Teresa, who–get this–is from my very own La Grande, Oregon! I am reminded that it truly is a very teeny tiny microscopic world, and anything is possible.

A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo

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I am blown away by the slow burn called A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo. The first and majority of the book is a quiet, steady dialogue between the main character and her “lover.” As you know, I am not a theory hound, but this book was one of few that has made me want to turn steadily back to some of the theories presented in this book, and in grad programs across the world, including my own, and see if I can now find a different way in to them, more my own, perhaps feminine, a more first gen, working-class, creative, put two ideas next to each other to see the new, true, and also beautifully enigmatic knowing that emerges.

I love some of her snarky responses to the rote theories her partner espouses. I found the book to be an incredibly bold and feminist and completely empowering that she takes on subjects that are often, almost always (always?), interpreted through a male lens. She even uses Barthes’ exact same title. So bold! How might I do more of this myself? The book ends with both the theory and physicality of reproduction.

Often I find modern literature to be too cold and unemotional. This book had some of those qualities, but I still felt deeply and identified with many of the main character’s experiences. New motherhood is depicted in almost entirely negative terms, but much of the book is.

In new motherhood, I, too, started to think of mothers in response to every act of killing I heard on the news. These mothers have worked so hard to raise of their children, up until the very moment that their lives are taken. Guo has this exact same insight. We are all one, I suppose.

Finally, the relationship–I’ve felt nearly every one of the feelings or loneliness, isolation, desire, and confusion. I have yelled for him to “Bring wipes” as the baby’s mess grows, only to have him emerge too late, confused and groggy. “When have you had time to listen to music?” The changing home, the changing dynamic, described so uniquely and so true, perhaps especially for the creative woman.

Through it we are two people, changed, and in discourse with each other—lovers.

Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller

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For whatever reason, I’ve been reading a disproportionate number of memoirs by Native American women. I’ve also been loving them. The most recent is Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller. The book is troubling and straightforward. It seemed to be divided into two distinct sections, although it’s not formatted as such. I found myself wanting to read two separate books: one about childhood through the death of her mother and another about life after that death. (I don’t think it’s a spoiler to mention the death here because the reader knows about it from early on.)

Most children with parents who are addicts and homeless don’t go on to write beautiful books, so in that regard this novel is unique and offers a perspective that’s rarely told.

One of the main takeaways for me is the way that dysfunctional families impact their members constantly. The always immediate need for housing, medical help, mental health support, food, emotional support, and on and on, just never seems to end, and it impacts every aspect of one’s life. It’s something I’ll understand in a new way in my interactions with others who may be experiencing this same constant and continual drain from their own dysfunctional families.

This book is heavy and hard, but important. Oh, and there’s weaving! I hope the next book has more weaving.

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi

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In the precious time between when the term begins and when the grading comes flooding in, I read Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi. It’s an interesting and heavy book. I was really interested in the unique relationship that is depicted between daughter and mother. The lines of reality are blurred throughout, making the point that reality is fragile and based on a corroborated story shared by people.

I was interested in the setting, which felt foreign to me, but also familiar as so much of the daily tasks of living, eating, and interacting with others are shared across borders.

This book was heavier than what I need right now, but the reading was good, and I need that even more.

Here are some lines that I liked:

“My mother knew marriages were generally unhappy, but she was young and had not fully metabolized the idea that this would be her reality. She still believed she was special, exceptional and had thoughts that no one else did” (44).

“I tell her I am not sure what to do, that maybe I’ve lost my imagination./ She says she never thought my work required much imagination, that it was copying an image over and over again./ I explain that I mean another kind of imagination, the kind that invents a world where my work matters” (174).

“Is the sensation of receiving a kiss less pleasurable than that of giving it?” (212).

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

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Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May was recommended by some well-read and well respected people, so perhaps my expectations were a bit too high. Still, I love the premise, which is about enduring difficult times, even leaning into them, moving through them, and eventually coming back to the light. So much of grief, sorrow, and depression is about stopping it, fixing it, and getting over it. This book is really the antithesis of that, which I find intriguing.

The intro is quite gripping, and this is where the strength of the book lies–when May is sharing her own personal story and experiences. However, there were also so many questions left unanswered. Like, did her husband’s health fully return? Why did she dislike her job? How did her husband and child feel about the author’s “wintering”? How did it impact her closest relationships?

There is also a trend in this kind of journalistic genre, where the author flip flops back and forth between personal writing and inquiry and an informative, lecture style. I am fully engaged by the personal story, but the lecture is always less interesting. First of all, while reading these sections, I often have an overwhelming reaction of “I already know this already.” It seems as though the insights in the lecture are not very insightful after all. Secondly, the transitions between the sections often seem awkward or unconvincing. Lastly, the lectures often feel forced. I can imaging an editor insisting that the author make the reader “eat their vegetables,” instead of just eating the cheesecake (cheesecake being the insights and personal journey).

There were even moments that rang false within the more journalistic sections. The section on wolves seemed particularly fraught. She claims that wolves don’t kill people. (They do.) That they kill more than they need and that’s reasonable. (How is that more reasonable than wasteful? murderous?). Finally, she claims that wolves are irrationally trapped, poisoned, shot, *beaten*, and killed, and that’s when I knew she was going a little overboard. I just highly doubt that these wild animals are tortured (beaten), though I’m not disputing that they are killed regularly by people. Also, I wanted to hear more about the bees.

Despite my complaints, this is a good book worth reading. I myself love restful times for quiet, recovery, reading, and introspection, and this book is really a celebration of that. While how the depression (she avoids this word) started is very developed, I would have loved to see that same development in the middle and then again at the end of her wintering. As I write in the beginning, this is a novel approach to sorrow and difficult times, and I think it’s a healthy approach, one that would be/will be helpful for me to return to in my own difficult times.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

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One of this year’s “big reads” through the NEA is Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. I read this in college and have lugged around a copy for about two decades. I decided it was time to read it again, and I’m glad I did.

my own well worn copy of The House on Mango Street

I remember almost nothing from reading it the first time. It truly is an excellent book, and I think very original, especially given it’s publication date (1984). I noticed that it seems more dated and even historical than the first time I read it. Her childhood happened in the early 60s, and that was 60 years ago! However, some things about childhood never change.

Rereading this book made me realize that I am now old enough to reread books, which I never did before. I’ve lived long enough now to have forgotten books I read in my early 20s. I’ve lived long enough now to gain completely new and different insights from some of the books I read in my early 20s. I was also an English major, and so I read a lot of books during that time! I find myself scanning my bookshelf wondering what other old gems could be rediscovered.