MOM’S THE WORD in creative writing
Twenty Canadian writers explore the relationship between motherhood and creativity
The experience of motherhood is rarely discussed in connection with literary or creative life. Torontobased journalist and author Stacey May Fowles and Vancouver author Jen Sookfong Lee thought it was time to do something about it.
After many conversations about the day-to-day struggles of being both mothers and writers, they asked other mother writers with wide-ranging experiences to contribute essays to “Good Mom on Paper: Writers on Creativity and Motherhood.”
Divided into four sections — Time, Body, Space and Self — “Good Mom on Paper” starts by delving into the notion of defining a good mother and how women are instantly expected to fill that tall order. The 20 essays within the collection, including ones by Heather O’Neill, Teresa Wong, Harriet Alida Lye and the late Lee Maracle, showcase big and small sacrifices and successes that go beyond cliché answers of what motherhood means to creators.
As Meaghan Strimas, poet, mother, and creative and professional writing professor at Humber College, puts it in her essay “That Time in Trailer #289”: “When it comes to writing, I’m still at the same crossroads, assaulted by the same unanswerable question of why bother.” This sentiment is mulled over throughout the collection and culminates in a unifying howl of support, reminding each other — and all mothers out there — that they too must remember to embrace what makes their own hearts sing.
Each writer has their own specific challenges in addition to those that fit under the vast umbrella of motherhood. Fiction writer Carrie Snyder writes of the sometimes crippling sense of responsibility in her essay “The Dog Was Fine,” while Jael Richardson, author of “Gutter Child” and “The Stone Thrower,” and executive director of the Festival of Literary Diversity, speaks of her inner tumult as she navigates the disparity between her preconceived ideas of motherhood and its reality in her essay “That Kind of Mother.”
In “Birth at the End of the World,” Sofia Mostaghimi writes of guilt’s relentless drone while championing the hope contained within the act of creating. Citing books and articles for those who want to delve deeper, her essay serves as a balm to the frustration that comes in trying to accomplish everything moms set out to do while keeping it all together: “But in all of these stories, hope is never actually lost. I guess that’s the point. It’s found in human connection and beauty. It is really that simple.”
“Good Mom on Paper” is not about “having it all” or being a “boss mom,” as its editors point out in the introduction. Instead, it offers perspective and very real examples of how each contributor coped with their situations.
Award-winning journalist and author Rachel Giese insightfully speaks to the trap of Western history’s propensity to use the metaphor of creativity-as-birth in “A Book Is Not a Baby,” writing: “For so long, motherhood has been, or been seen as, an impediment to creative work, while the creativity mothers have brought to day-to-day work has been dismissed or overlooked. Motherhood has meant not being taken seriously as an artist.” For generations, she writes: “the common artistry of motherhood has not been rightfully acknowledged.” Her essay leads the collection’s rallying cries for all mothers to soldier on with their creativity despite the obstacles presented.
These essays are best read one or two at a time to allow space to ponder their ideas. Referencing strong female writers, both past and present — Virginia Woolf, Anne Carson, Alice Walker, Sylvia Plath, Claudia Dey — each writer shares their experience, strength and hope, and invites all women, not just moms and writers, to “challenge traditional forms of styles of cultural enquiry.”