Reading Native Mother Writing

Writers tend to be readers. So, here is a good book to put on your nightstand.

Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writing of North America edited by Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird (Norton, 1997).

I have read many collections of women's writing throughout my years as a women's literary historian. I have, however, not ever found one that integrates writing about motherhood into general women's writing as well as this one does.

I was surprised. There is not merely one token story about motherhood; there are many, throughout the text, and not put into a separate category that somehow indicates an experience that is separate from the multiplicity of women's lives. There are no stories that show how motherhood and marriage destroyed an artist's or writer's chances; there are stories that show women being both mothers and artists, writers, and powerful, creative people. There are no long debates about mothers either working or staying at home; there are stories that show how native women have always worked, and that in their traditional cultures, their mothering work tended to be valued as much as the warrior work done by men. When all work is valued, and it is assumed that women and men will do both domestic and nondomestic work as part of their vital contributions to their families and communities, the mommy wars are irrelevant.

I enjoyed reading this book, not only for the window into a culture different from the white, mainstream culture in which I was raised, but also for its celebration of women and their many productive and creative roles. Mothers--you will love seeing another how native culture offers mainstream white Americans a different way of valuing motherhood!

In honor of Allison Crews

Sylvia Plath. Anne Sexton. Many other mother writers dead by their own actions. And now Allison Crews.

I never knew Allison. But I was impressed with her writing and her activist work. I wrote about how my students responded to her piece When I Was Garbage in a Mothering in the Ivory Tower column here at Literary Mama called Family Lit 101. I was moved by her as they were, as were the readers of the site she produced, Girl Mom. She will be missed.

I am sorry that she felt so alone. I cry for the son she left behind. I am sad to know that another one of us literary mamas did not make it.

Think of Allison. Hug your children. And write. Damn it. Keep writing. In that way, we honor her truths with our own.

Profile: Marrit Ingman

Literary Mama's own Rebecca Kaminsky interviews Marrit Ingman about her forthcoming memoir, Inconsolable, due out from Seal Press in October. In talking about the book, which explores Ingman's experience with post-partum depression, they hit upon what's turned out to be a fruitful topic among mothers: judgement.

RK: In the book you talk about the judgment mothers have of one another's parenting. Did your perceived judgment by other mothers at the time of your depression affect your recovery from PPD? Do you think that these judgments affect how we perceive ourselves?

MI: A hundred times yes. I went into labor as a very judgmental person, and I came out of it with a surgical birth, and in my community that's considered a failure. I'm a middle-class white person living in a politically progressive community, more or less, and I think there's a lot of pressure on families to stick to the model of "I don't vaccinate, and I had a homebirth, and we have a family bed, and we eat organic food from the farmer's market" or whatever. When I wasn't able to do some of those things, I felt like even more of a failure. We forget sometimes that it's hard to reason qualitatively when you are depressed. It's hard to reason qualitatively when you are tired and you have an infant, and you are making decisions that you think are going to make or break your child as a human being forevermore. We have no idea whether we are successful as parents of very young children except by comparing ourselves to other people.

RK: In terms of writing the book, did you think about how people, especially other mothers, would judge you? If so, do you think it affected your writing or choice of content?

MI: At times I think I went too far the other way, that I adopted this attitude of "If you don't like my parenting choices, then fuck off and take your sustainably-grown produce with you." That attitude is just as dangerous.

Read the rest of the interview here.

"Gardening is writing…"

A few years ago, I took the summer "off" to write. That is, I didn't teach any classes. "Off" for a mother-writer means that you still have all the same child-and-family related duties (or more, as, after all, you aren't "working"). So there I was, with a couple of months in front of me to finish a rewrite on a novel. And all I did was garden. I weeded the nasty grasses out from under 150 flagstones. I took a level area, built mounds, and planted perennials: lavender and melissa and sage and thyme and Meyer lemon. I uncovered weed roots and removed them. I got really big muscles. I did not -- could not -- write. "Gardening is writing," my friend Chris (journalist and novelist) reassured me.

Indeed, three months later, back in the thick of it all, I had a burst of autumn energy and finished the rewrite. And I think it's because I had those months to work with my body and think, even though I didn't think I was thinking.

Writing and gardening (and parenting), it's the same creative process. Sometimes slow. Sometimes thankless. And sometimes gardening is the most satisfying of all -- at least you can see what you've accomplished during the day.

Gardening is writing I reassure myself these weeks, as I wait to hear the verdict on my collection of short stories from a few agents. I'm in that writer limbo that resembles late pregnancy -- too late to do anything but wait and nest. This baby is fully viable. When do the contractions start?

I bought 1,200 pounds of stones from American Soil and Stone Products last week. And today, a big, brawny guy is going to help me move them from the sidewalk outside my house into the garden. We'll excavate a few inches of soil, lay some sand, and then I'll get to play.

In the meanwhile, the fiction department here at Literary Mama is looking for an editorial assistant. If you are a strong copyeditor, a fiction writer, and a mother, please email me. Send me a brief bio. You'll be working closely with me, Ericka, so enjoying gardening metaphors is a plus.