Magic 8 Ball Mind

My life as a parent seems to come at the storytelling problem differently. The experience crowds out the narration, rather than the other way around. What is there to say about omnipresence? There’s a tactility to parenting (feeding, cleaning, dressing, hugging, rocking, kissing), a primitive quality (love, protection, devotion), that resists intel... See more

The book also signals a way out of a prominent contemporary narrative in which women—usually white women—are portrayed as intellectually and creatively stifled by childbearing, and motherhood is characterized as an inherent threat to individual possibility. This narrative isn’t wrong; during the past nineteen months, I’ve had less time to work, hav... See more

It helps me because every day there are contractions of frustration, of anxiety, of wanting to yell, of giving in to yelling, of wanting to run away, of being brave when my son is scared even though I am scared, of comforting him even though I feel I have nothing to give. Drinking has been my ongoing epidural because being a mother involves, in so

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