Reviewed by Merle J. Huerta
At twenty-five, Jessica Berger Gross, overweight, depressed from a recent breakup, and craving self esteem, was coping the only way she knew how – through comfort foods, cigarettes, and alcohol. Raised in an abusive, emotionally dysfunctional family, Jessica fed her unhappiness with bagels and cream cheese, and though she was an overeater, she had come to assume that her constitution was genetically predetermined. While heading to a local bagel shop one day, she wandered into a neighborhood yoga center and joined the others doing Sun Salutations. After an hour of stretching and doing "om's," Jessica noticed an emotional release and an elevated mood. She became a yoga teacher, adopted yogic principles in her life, began eating pineapple for breakfast, took long walks with her dog, Salem, and changed her physical constitution to a leaner, vibrant, healthier one.
Sound a little too fairy-tale-ish? In five hundred words or less, it might. But what Jessica Berger Gross outlines in her newest book, enLIGHTened, How I Lost 40 Pounds With a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer, is an effective and applicable road map that any overwrought mommy lost in the mire of dirty laundry, sleepless nights, and poor eating habits can integrate into her life. Anchored by yogic principles, healthy eating suggestions, yoga poses, and painfully humorous vignettes of her own transition from emotional dysfunction and fluctuating weight to enlightenment, Jessica provides a pragmatic approach to changing poor lifestyle habits.
At first, I was skeptical. In the sea of memoirs where the narrator seeks spiritual and emotional enlightenment, few outline a constructive, easy-to-integrate approach. And in my real life, children, work, bills, and too little personal time made it implausible for me to seek enlightenment, whether by escaping to an ashram in Tibet or to a small, rustic shed on the Cape for a year of self-reflection. Just locking myself in the bathroom for fifteen minutes of meditation while a four year old banged on the door was difficult enough.
I decided to put enLIGHTened to work from Chapter 1. So, one weekend morning, I cut open a pineapple, broke the book binder, spread the book open on the living room floor, and practiced the yoga poses. And though my three year old climbed in and around my twisted body, in the end, I felt like I had indeed accomplished something personal. At night, while my husband zoned on B-rated Sci-Fi movies, I lay in a Final Resting Post. I learned how to do a headstand, something I hadn't done since fifth grade, and taught my younger children the approach. I adopted some of Jessica's vegetarian recipes – some that were met with "oooh's," some that were met with "ich's." And finally, I joined a gym so I could do more constructive yoga with other grownups.
In the end, I did indeed integrate some of Jessica's philosophies. And most importantly, if I skipped a day, the omission wasn't viewed as an overall personal failure. The book's inherent applicable nature is precisely what differentiates it from other memoirs. While some, written from the perspective of a fictional romance novel, are enjoyable simply as an escapist read, enLIGHTened drops breadcrumbs so that real women and mommies can find their way back to an emotional center.
END OF LIFE
Creative Nonfiction is again working with the good folks at SMU Press, this time on a collection tentatively titled "End of Life Stories."
For this collection, we are seeking essays that explore death, dying, and end of life care. We're looking for stories from physicians, nurses, hospice workers, counselors, clergy, family members, and others.Narratives should highlight current features, flaws, and advances in the health care system. Essays must be vivid and dramatic; they should combine a strong and compelling narrative with a significant element of research or information.
There is a $20 reading fee--$25 covers the reading fee AND gets you a 4-issue subscription to CNF. Creative Nonfiction editors will award $2500 in prizes.
Submissions must be postmarked by December 31, 2009, and "End of Life Stories" must be clearly marked on the envelope and cover letter.
Please send all manuscripts, accompanied by a cover letter with complete contact information, SASE, and payment (when necessary) to:
Creative Nonfiction
5501 Walnut Street, Suite 202
Pittsburgh, PA 15232
For more information about any of these collections and complete submission guidelines, visit us online or email us at information@creativenonfiction.org.
Being and Thinking as an Academic Mother: Theory and Narrative
CALL FOR PAPERS FOR ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM
The Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) and the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University will co-host a one-day symposium at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute on Thursday, April 08, 2010 on “Being and Thinking as an Academic Mother: Theory and Practice.”
ARM and the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University are now seeking submissions for the symposium. The symposium will explore academic mothers’ experiences from both narrative and theory. While previous panel discussions and collections such as PhD Momma and Parenting and Professing examined being a mother academic from narrative or “lived experience” and others, Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering issue on Mothers in the Academe, explored mother academics’ experiences from a theoretical perspective, this is the first symposium to do so incorporating both narrative and theory. The symposium will explore how both research and narrative can inform contemporary understandings of academic motherhood, particularly in regard to strategies of resistance and empowerment.
Paper proposals should strengthen the dialogue among academic motherhood, intellectual ideas, and personal narrative. The symposium will explore the topic of Being and Thinking as an Academic Mother from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. We welcome submissions from scholars across disciplines.
The symposium will run from 9-5 and will include approximately 25 papers, with each panelist having 20 minutes to present their paper. To present at this symposium, you must be a member of ARM. The symposium will coincide with the NeMLA conference (April 07-11, 2010) at McGill University. The Institute is located at 2170 Bishop Street, MontrealQuebec.
Topics can include (but are not limited to):
the maternal wall, "opting out", mentoring and modeling, being a professor mother, work-life balance, negotiating or resisting the maternal wall, single mothers and academic work, graduate student mothering, being a mother on the tenure track, being a pregnant professor, maternity leave and academic mothering, poverty and academic mothering, juggling mothering and academic expectations, intersections between feminism and academic mothering, being an academic artist and mothering, race and academic mothering, academic job searches and mothering, teaching and mothering, sexuality and academic mothering, male organizing principles and academic mothering, the academic schedule and mothering, fertility and academic mothering, challenging assumptions about academic mothers, ethics and academic mothering, “having it all” as academic mothers, adoption and academic mothering, networking, strategies for surviving academic mothering, class and academic mothering, race and academic mother mentors, social reproduction and academic mothering, motherhood closet, being out as a mother, second/third shift in the home, academic culture and mothering, maternal pedagogy, myth of ideal worker/ideal mother, intensive mothering and academe, unboundedness of mother work and academic work, childcare, fathering, trailing spouses, academic couples, biological clock, university policies and mothering, timing and spacing of children, perceptions of mothers in academe, discrimination avoidance, discrimination against mothers in academe, motherhood penalty, “price of motherhood”, adjunct work, teaching and motherhood, benefits of motherhood on teaching and research.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Abstracts due by December 01, 2010.
Scholars interested in submitting proposals to this symposium are invited to submit proposals to D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein at lhallst@bu.edu
or Andrea O’Reily aoreilly@yorku.ca
Former Literary Mama columnist Sophia Raday, who is profiled this month, will read from her memoir, Love in Condition Yellow, THIS SATURDAY October 10th from 12-1, as part of Litquake, San Francisco's annual literary festival. She will join other memoirists, Andy Raskin, Canyon Sam, Genine Lentine, Holly Payne, and Steven Winn for an hour panel, "As I Recall It," which is part of Litquake's traditional "Off the Richter Scale" reading series.
Free!
October 10th, 12 - 1 pm
At the Koret Auditorium in the San Francisco Main Library.
More details: http://www.litquake.org/saturday-october-10/
Enter your non-fictional narrative for the opportunity to be included in an anthology, sharing real life accounts of how fathers have shaped daughters lives, to be published in June 2010.
It is my mission to gather authentic experiences to create an inspirational anthology of collective wisdom, an offering of guidance for the dads of tomorrow in the care of their daughters.
Please pass along to all the women in your life, I'd like to cast the net as far across the US (for now) as possible.
Go to www.daughterstory.blogspot.com for details on how to submit.
Thank you for believing in the importance of this anthology, I look forward to reading each and every illuminating story.
Dear Writers,
We’re now accepting short first-person essays (900 words maximum) for possible publication in our January 2010 issue.
The theme: "A moment (big or small) after which nothing was the same."
Please note that although we have nothing against poems, short stories, or epic novels, we can only consider bona fide essays for the purpose of this issue.
To submit an essay for consideration:
Paste it into your email to editorial@themonthly.com and attach it as a Word document (doc, not docx, please).
Please include your name, telephone number, and email on every page.
Deadline: November 16.
Autumn Stephens and Sarah Weld
Co-Editors,The East Bay Monthly
We’re now accepting short first-person essays (900 words maximum) for possible publication in our January 2010 issue.
The theme: "A moment (big or small) after which nothing was the same."
Please note that although we have nothing against poems, short stories, or epic novels, we can only consider bona fide essays for the purpose of this issue.
To submit an essay for consideration:
Paste it into your email to editorialATthemonthlyDOTcom and attach it as a Word document (doc, not docx, please).
Please include your name, telephone number, and email on every page.
Deadline: November 16.
Please feel free to forward this call for submissions to anyone who might be interested.
Very truly yours,
Autumn Stephens and Sarah Weld
Co-Editors, The East Bay Monthly
The University of Rochester
October 9, 1:15-2:30 PM
Join Literary Mama columnist and Mama, PhD coeditor Elrena Evans in conversation with author Judith Warner and filmmaker Pamela Tanner Boll at the University of Rochester this Friday, October 9th.
Location: Interfaith Chapel
Room: Sanctuary
Cost: FREE
Judith Warner is the author of several best-selling works, including Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety; Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story; You Have the Power: How to Take Back Our Country; and Restore Democracy in America (with Howard Dean). She writes the New York Times blog Domestic Disturbances and has written for Newsweek, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Elle magazine.
Pamela Tanner Boll is an artist and director of the film
Who Does She Think She Is?, which follows five women artists as they navigate the economic, psychological, and spiritual challenges of making work outside the elite art world.
Elrena Evans is co-editor of Mama, Ph.D: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life and author of the Literary Mama column Me and My House.
Sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership. For more information, visit the University of Rochester website.
Who Does She Think She Is?, the terrific documentary about women trying to combine motherhood and artistic work, is coming out on DVD! Mama at the Movies columnist Caroline Grant wrote about the film last year ; here's an excerpt:
I hadn't really thought about the constraints of space and materials that visual artists work with until I watched Pamela Tanner Boll's moving new documentary Who Does She Think She Is? (2008), which introduces us to several mother-artists and asks why, when making art and raising children are both crucial for our culture, it is so hard to do both. The film wants us to know about these mothers making art, and it puts their stories in the larger context of all women artists. Like all women, women artists find their work less well-known and less well-compensated than the work of their male contemporaries. Like all mothers, mother artists endure isolation from their peers, sleep deprivation, and myriad claims on their time which make it difficult to continue their careers. But they do.
The filmmakers are celebrating the DVD release by organizing house parties around the country on November 8th. Want to join them? You can buy the DVD at a 10% discount with a special promotional code for Literary Mama readers; just go the DVD online store and enter the promo code LitMama.
There's more information about the house party idea here and here. Check it out, and then gather your friends for a screening!
Literary Reflections is pleased to present our featured writing prompt response from September. We asked, " Have you been a member of a group that helped you connect with your true passion? How did this group sharpen your focus? At times, did you resent their guidance? What insights to your talents did the group offer?"
Cara Holman wrote:
When I first pick up the flier announcing the formation of a writing group for women cancer survivors, I am ecstatic. Finally, a silver lining to all the misery I have endured the last three months. A chance to reawaken my childhood passion. It is only after I secure myself a spot in the group that the self-doubts begin. What makes me think I can write?
We enter as strangers the first day, tentative, eying each other warily. We are here because our bodies have betrayed us, have harbored silent invaders who have fed on our cells with hedonistic abandon. We are here because in the quest to seek out and destroy cancer cells, we have been relentlessly poked, prodded, cut, bruised, and de-humanized. Writing offers us a chance to make our voices heard again.
It is the second or third meeting before we write about cancer. I hear anger, fear, despair, pain. If I listen carefully enough, I also catch faint glimmerings of hope. I feel a shock of recognition in hearing my own inner feelings reflected back to me in someone else's words. I realize I am not alone.
Week after week we hear the same message from our group facilitator until we are almost ready to believe it. Everyone has a strong unique voice. Writing belongs to all people. Above all, a writer is someone who writes.
Slowly we learn to trust one another. Slowly, we begin to trust our own traitorous bodies again. It is not a linear process. We informally dub our group "The Healing Pen," a safe haven where no emotions are too raw to examine.
But there are times when I wonder why I am still with the group nearly three years out from my diagnosis. I ask this when Robin succumbs to her cancer, and again when we lose Melecia. Isn't it time I put the whole cancer chapter of my life behind me and move on?
I think the answer is this. Our group has never been a place where we write exclusively about cancer. We also write about dim sum, banana slugs, jigsaw puzzles, pets, and pet peeves. For a few hours a week, I am able to feel whole again, validated by the other women in my group. I come to believe that I am something more than the disease that had taken up residence in my body. I am a person with something worthwhile to say. In spite of the scars and my uncertain future, I am still me.
Yes, there is pain involved sometimes. Some writings hit a raw nerve. There are days when I tell myself I will never come back. But I always do. What this group gives me is a refuge in which to write, surrounded by other courageous and articulate women who respond to my words but never judge me. Our words are our greatest weapon in our joint fight against cancer. Cancer may threaten our very existence, but it can never still our voices.
Cara Holman can be reached at her blog "Prose Posies."
Join us Tuesday, October 13th for a scintillating
evening with Sarah Langan and JT Petty. Hear two great writers share their work and talk about the the gruesome details of what it's like to be writers who are new parents. Have a glass of wine in our exclusive Pen Parentis Upstairs Library bar, be part of a literary movement, and support contemporary writers who are also parents.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
M.M. DeVoe & Arlaina Tibensky
Co-Founders
Pen Parentis
DATE:Tuesday, October 13, 2009
TIME: 6-8 pm, come after work!
LOCATION: The Upstairs Library at the Libertine, inside the Gildhall Hotel @ 15 Gold Street, NYC.
DIRECTIONS: Walking directions from A/C (@ Broadway/Nassau) or 2/3/4/5/J/M/Z (@ Fulton) trains: Walk east on Fulton Street to Gold Street, turn right and right again at Platt.
Walking directions from 4/5 train or E train or PATH: From Broadway take Maiden Lane east to Gold Street (third intersection). Turn left on Gold and left again at Platt.
Enter through the lobby of the Gildhall Hotel and join us upstairs for a night to remember.