The M Word: A Roundup for Mother’s Day Part 2
by Kerry Clare
After the birth of my first child, I was fascinated by how experiences of motherhood (and also choosing not to have such experiences, or having that choice made for you, or experiencing motherhood in unconventional ways) can make one feel far outside the realm of ordinary, and not in a good way. What would happen, I wondered, if put all these very different stories together? What kind of story would that tell? The M Word is the answer to that wondering, an anthology that honours mothers and motherhood in all its complexity, as do the works I’ve listed below—some of whom are by The M Word contributors.
Toxemia
by Christine McNair (Book*hug Press)
McNair blends high and low culture, arts and science, words and images, memoir and research to tell the story of her life as a woman with a body, a body that is so often wrong or dangerous. McNair’s experiences of pre-eclampsia during her two pregnancies don’t just have consequences for her mental and physical health, but also tap into earlier struggles with depression, self-harm, and eating disorders. “I am now more afraid of telling doctors my history,” she writes. Though with Toxemia, she’s made art of that story, a moving and compelling narrative, strange, unsettling, and unputdownable
Send Me Into the Woods Alone
by Erin Pepler (Invisible Publishing)
While this collection is subtitled “Essays on Motherhood,” it is a story of becoming, a story of womanhood and daughterhood, and personhood. Truly it’s a smorgasbord of goodness, essays recounting a difficult pregnancy, the details of labour (that one is called “A Million Hands in One Vagina”), and onward through the years. The collection is tremendously moving, but also very funny. Like motherhood itself, Send Me Into The Woods Alone is equal-parts light and dark, joy and misery, another writer unafraid to be complicated and tell the truth.
Widows and Orphans
by Elizabeth Renzetti and Kate Hilton (House of Anansi Press)
This one is the second installment of Renzetti and Hilton’s Quill and Packet Mystery Series, and I haven’t read it yet. BUT, I loved their previous book, Bury the Lead, which alluded to protagonist Cat Conway’s, um, COMPLICATED relationship with her mother, and now in this book we get to meet the woman herself. I can’t wait to see what disasters unfold, and who ends up getting murdered.
Who By Water
by Greg Rhyno (Cormorant Books)
Rhyno’s Dame Polera is one of my favourite literary sleuths, and she’s back in the latest installment in this Toronto-set series. And now she’s a single mother, chasing after her adorable two-year-old, and revelling in having her dream of motherhood come true. Although it does complicate her side-hustle as a PI, especially once she has to solve her ex-husband’s murder, which she’s being framed for.
Diagnosing Minor Illnesses in Children
by Kerry Ryan (Frontenac House)
Kerry Ryan’s singular vision and attention to perfect details works to render the ordinary absolutely extraordinary, the world shown anew through these poems about bodies, birth and motherhood, and the wildness of all of it. Plus the cover art is by Julie Morstad, who has illustrated so many books I’ve read with my own children.
Sweet Devilry
by Yi-Mei Tsiang (Oolichan Press)
This was another essential text when motherhood was new to me, when it was poetry that seemed best suited to putting the broken pieces of my world back together into something resembling sense. The first poem begins, “On the morning of your birth…” and contains the wonderful line, “Learn a good latch, kiddo–/ it pays to hold on/ to someone you love.”
Living Expenses
by Teri Vlassopoulos (Invisible Publishing)
The mother in this book is Claire and Laura’s single mom, an immigrant from the Philippines who has decided to try dating now that her children are grown, but the mother story at the heart of the book is Laura’s own longing for a child and her exhausting IVF journey, an experience that doesn’t accord to narrative expectations, and Vlassopoulos captures that harrowing trajectory so beautifully.
What Remains of Elsie Jane
by Chelsea Wakelyn (Dundurn Press)
Elsie Jane for mother of the year! She’s wracked with pain and grief and lust and longing after the death of a partner from drug poisoning, a loss that has left her with a backyard full of weeds, an addiction to dating apps, and two small children who need feeding and caring day-after-day, and she’s hanging on, just barely. Or not really at all… But I love her, and I love this novel.
From My Mother’s Back
by Njoki Wane (Wolsak & Wynn)
Wane’s rich and generous memoir weaves the story of her childhood in rural Kenya with her current experiences as a professor at the University of Toronto, showing the long journey she took to meet her goals, but also how these two parts of her life are deeply connected, and informed by her strong bond with her siblings, her parents, especially her mother, and her ancestors.
The Fun Times Brigade
by Lindsay Zier-Vogel (Book*hug Press)
In her second novel, Lindsay Zier-Vogel explores the grief and isolation of new motherhood, and the challenges of blending motherhood and artistry as new mom Amy mourns her former life as a successful children’s entertainer and wonders how her world got so small. The narrative moves between Amy’s postpartum experiences and also her years on the road making music, and suggests there might be a way for these two threads to be reconcilable.
