Review by Issa M. Lewis – The idea of what a mother should be is often romanticized in popular thought. Images of the perfect mother—ultra-organized, fierce protectors of their children (but never taking it so far as to appear unfeminine)—have been slathered over primetime television since its inception. However, Lisa Marie Brodsky shows us in Motherlung that mothers can also be fragile, scarred, and struggling. This dichotomy both strains and strengthens the mother/daughter relationship Brodsky skillfully renders in her poems, ultimately leading the speaker out of grief and into her adult life as a stepmother. The tone of conflict is…
Author: Mom Egg Review
“Pryputniewicz does not flinch from the challenges of the labyrinth—pathways that might lead equally, or randomly, to betrayal or desire.”—Bhanu Kapil, The Vertical Interrogration of Strangers Author Tania Pryputniewicz on November Butterfly – Writing the poems of November Butterfly gave me the opportunity to celebrate both the power and the fragility of the female experience as a writer, mother, and survivor of rape during adolescence. Motherhood brought buried layers of shame and fear to the surface from that trauma, initiating my impulse to find ways to protect my children and beyond that, to find ways for us all to survive and…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg It may not be a coincidence that I have received Tsaurah Litzky’s poetry chapbook Jerry in the Bardo for review around the same time as Roz Chast’s graphic memoir of her aging parents, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, or that it arrived in my hands during the month of both my mother’s Yarzheit (anniversary of the death of a loved one, according to the Hebrew calendar) and my father’s 86th birthday. There is a particular poignancy at this time of year and, for those of us of a certain age, reflecting upon the experience…
Review by Tara L. Masih – Even before this young adult book was published as a novel, it won a merit award as a novella from the annual SCBWI’s Magazine Award competition. After publication, it garnered a long list of honors and recognition, most notably Bank Street College’s Best Children’s Book of the Year and a Skipping Stones Honor Award. Kamata, a versatile author who has published other award-winning books in other genres (including The Beautiful One Has Come, stories, and Losing Kei, a novel), often tackles those issues that many writers avoid: physical disabilities, racism, cultural identity. In Gadget…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg – The subject of motherhood can be tricky territory for women, in the literary as well as visual arts, where practitioners want their subject matter to transcend the personal realm and “precious” expectations that are sometimes aroused by cultural assumption. Over time we’ve seen this remarkable bond portrayed eloquently and skillfully in the paintings of Mary Cassatt, capturing the intimacy but also painterly brilliance of any great Impressionist, and in the poems of Sharon Olds and Fran Castan, whose work encompasses a complex dynamic of the self emerging and retreating in the lives of one’s children,…
When I finally sit down to write poetry at 9 p.m. in my “office” – which is my laptop sitting on my long wooden dining room table – I usually hear a drama-filled voice start calling, “Mama, mama, come quick! Ariel fell under my bed and I need her now!” or “I need to pee! It’s an emergency!” or “I need a lullaby!” That’s from my just-turned-5-year-old daughter Grace. Almost a year ago, I had a nine-weeks-premature baby, Zack, who’s sleeping in the room next to Grace and will most likely wake up and start bawling when he hears her…
Review by Julie Maloney – What moves me about Nancy Gerber’s latest work, Fire and Ice, is how she captures the bearings of the heart. Gerber combines poetry with prose in a seamless marriage of love and hurt. Read it once. Then read it again. The second reading will prove even more riveting than the first. From the beginning, she beckons us to her world of Fire and Ice with words by Robert Frost: “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.” Structurally, the book is divided into two sections: Part One – My Mother’s Hand…
I set the trap tonight. Last week I wrote in my journal that life is sacred. Later, I bought the trap. Tonight I read to my child. Do animal mothers love their babies? Yes, yes, of course they do. Animal mothers love their babies, just like yours loves you. I kissed him goodnight. I came downstairs. Shakily I spread the peanut butter onto the trap. A minute ago I went outdoors. Two steps beyond the door, I stopped to breathe the cold air, to salute the moon and stars, so bright in a sky framed by the silhouettes of bare…
He could do it himself, make his own sandwich, omelette and Monterey Jack in pita bread, no tomato, just a pickle on the side. Could squeeze his own orange juice when he comes to visit. Wash his clothes. I could tell him—as I told my daughter when she moved out—that he’s old enough now but he is my youngest and, unlike the others, keeps to himself and clips his words, racing or mumbling or stripping to essentials, sometimes heated and sharp, though he has his moments—openings, warm and sudden as spring rain. I hold them like gold, hoping for more…
At 2 am I sit in a car in an unmarked parking spot around the corner from the house. Will he escape from his room, jump onto the roof and down to the driveway to run? Earlier, I tell his probation officers he won’t be showing up. The burly men are here to haul him outward-bound to West Virginia. The escort service owner assured me I’d be able to say goodbye. But the ex-CIA men push me aside and out the door as they bound up the stairs. I wait, my eyes fixated on my driveway. The three of them…