Literary Reflections Contributor in Random House Anthology

Pushing her red-haired daughter into the world was, Elrena Evans realizes, the coolest thing she had ever done. Now they nurse, watch Star Trek, read The Baby Goes Beep, navigate graduate school meetings, and nurse a whole lot more. Together, they are Birthing: A Process in Vignettes. You read it here first; read it again in the new anthology Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers: On New Jobs, Old Loves, Fighting the Man, Having a Kid, Saving the World, and Everything in Between.

Literary Mama Columnist in Wondertime Magazine

Literary Mama columnist Deesha Philyaw (The Girl is Mine) has written an article on tackling teasing in the Fall 2006 issue of Wondertime. The article, which features Philyaw's daughter's experiences, looks at the psychology of teasing and what parents can do to help. Wondertime is a relatively new parenting magazine that focuses on parenting young children (birth to six). The familiar voices of Sandra Tsing Loh and Catherine Newman are also featured in the magazine.

The Literary Mama E-zine Relaunches!

After a vacation, the Literary Mama e-zine is back up and running. If you are a subscriber, you already will have received the first of a new bi-weekly newsletter in your email box, bringing you tasty tidbits of Literary Mama's latest writing, news and more. If you aren't a subscriber and would like to be, please join us!

Shannon

Book Release: Ghost in the House

Tomorrow marks the release of Tracy Thompson's much anticipated book, The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with Depression. In this book, award-winning former Washington Post journalist Tracy Thompson (author of The Beast: A Journey Through Depression) explores the topic of maternal depression. She intertwines her research findings, quotes from her interviews and surveys with hundreds of mothers, and her own story of both mothering through depression and being mothered by a women suffering from the illness to create a text that is part medical journal, part self-help guide for depression sufferers and part biography. While Thompson's is not the first book on the subject (Anne Sheffield's Sorrow's Web is a very solid text about maternal depression), Thompson's up to date research and gorgeous writing style make her book one well worth reading.

The book will be of particular interest to mother writers who have struggled with depression as Thompson's experience will be familiar:

There is no end to [children's]. . . demands, and for mothers there is no end to the guilty sense that at any given moment, some need of theirs is not being met. As I write these words, it is night and I am stealing work time from what should be my daughter's bedtime ritual. She comes into my study: "Mom, you promised." My work needs me; she needs me. She needs to talk right now; I am fighting the daily battle of carving out hours to write. But do I need to be a writer? You're selfish; if your work is not somehow providing for your children's necessities or their life enrichment, you're just massaging your ego, says a voice in my head. Then comes another: No! Women are more than mommies; don't you want your daughters to know this? This mental point and counterpoint takes a tenth of a second and is of no interest to my eight-year-old; she is literally getting in my face. "You promised."

Even if you have not suffered from maternal depression a number of things she points out about the intense stress and guilt which seem to be part and parcel of mothering these days rings true.

MotherTalk is facilitating a blog tour for the book and on my personal blog, MUBAR, I take a look at the book and ask author Tracy Thompson what role society can play in helping women suffering from maternal depression. Other blogs on the tour include Woulda Coulda Shoulda, Three Kid Circus, Parent Hacks, Sweetney.com, and Dooce's Heather Armstrong at Alpha Mom.

Please resubmit applications

The email we provided for applications for Literary Mama positions was not working properly, and we are afraid we have missed some of your applications. If you would like to work for LM, check out our job announcements at this previous post and resubmit. Thanks!

Book Release: When the Cows Got Loose

Literary Reflections contributor Carol Weis has published a picture book, When the Cows Got Loose (Simon & Schuster). Kirkus gave a starred review to the raucous story of one determined girl and twenty-six alphabetically-named cows.

Literary Mama Blog Tour: This Woman's Work

Today's stop on the Literary Mama Blog Tour is at LM OpEd Editor Dawn Friedman's blog, This Woman's Work.

On her blog, Dawn writes about mothering, writing, and writing about mothering. In addition to writing about her two lovely children and the attempt to juggle work and family, Dawn writes about infertility, miscarriage and open adoption (her daughter Madison was brought to their family through domestic, open adoption).

In her post from August 1, she writes about her occasional jealousy towards her daughter's birth mother, Jessica:

. . . the first time I became aware of being jealous of Jessica was after we brought Madison home and one day I was examining her little body in the besotted way a new mother has and I noticed her beautiful, beautiful thumbs. Madison has very elegant thumbs; I do not. Madison gets her thumbs from Jessica, who also has very capable graceful hands with long fingers and thumbs. I have hands that look like they belong on the toddler walking doll I had as a kid. My hands have big palms and stubby little fingers. I didn’t feel like I could measure up to those thumbs. I didn’t feel capable of parenting a child with such elegant thumbs.

Her thumbs represented every way that I felt I fell short of all that Madison needs and deserves. People with thumbs like that — what did I have to teach them? She would grow up beautiful and full of grace and I would remain the leaden lumpy person that I am, someone who doesn’t understand how to pick out the right shade of lipstick, how to rhumba, or how to speak fluent French. In short, someone who didn’t deserve such a daughter. And I felt jealous of Jessica, with her undeniably lovely hands that had shown up there at the ends of the arms of the person who was supposed to be my child.

Dawn has recently started up a second blog focusing on secondary infertility. At Another Child, Dawn and a number of other bloggers share their experiences, outline recent fertility developments in the news, and run a forum for parents wanting support.