One of the things I enjoy about writing is that it allows me to think from the place of a story - sometimes it’s an event or something funny one of my children said or their strange, often ridiculous mannerisms with each other and how they show love to and for each other - in all of these descriptors are stories. These little fables, often only in my mind or seen through my eyes, fire together with things I’ve read or engaged with critically in other ways.
Marcelle Soviero describes writing after her first child (she has five - you know how this matters to me): “My view of the world was forever changed; I looked at every situation and everything I read through my mother self.” This resonates with me - my mother self is the primary and only self through which i work since children but it’s something more than this too. And my reflection today is about writing as a mother. I have a complex and deeply suspicious relationship with scholarship titled ‘motherhood studies’ - my fear is that it’s musings and theoretical foundations are too vacuous and navel-gazey. I am being exceptionally judgemental, I’ll take it… and I’m ok with this. This kind of writing insists that motherhood be considered important and serious work.
On the other hand, the post-femos have their millenial placards up with slogans about gender inclusive parenting (and mothering) or none at all and girl power circa 1997 - I was actually singing to the Spice Girls then, not reliving it through new models of old platforms. It’s pretty hard to know what version of critical thinking is acceptable, let alone mothering AND critical thinking AND critical, creative production or work. Please note that nothing I am writing about above has anything to do with the actual children or the stuff of mothering, or the fact that I’m up way too late and I know this because my eye is twitching and this means that the sandwich production line might be slightly delayed in the morning.
Critical writing is hard. There’s a reason that writing is a craft. And ok, scholars are a pain when it comes to writing because in the Humanities well, that’s what we are taught to do. Give us something to hold onto, I beg.
Mothering, is, no doubt even harder - it’s insanely hard, and, as it is for me, perhaps even the hardest thing you’ll ever do. It is beautiful and rewarding too yes, but it is tough managing the different parts of yourself and your mind and your affective states that can shift faster than you ever imagined possible.
How those two things live together as craft and survival (for self and them), well, I don’t know. But I do know that Saidiyah Hartman writes about her mother and I know that Tina Campt speaks about how photographs speak across time and space - and it strikes me that as I read these works, I’m also engaging how, through stories, mothers are telling us important and not so important things with their words, their bodies, their gaits and their words. When any one mother tries too hard and those stories are written for writing’s sake, the stories come tumbling down all around us… and they somewhat disappear in a haze of mom guilt (sometimes me in 2024) and Nutella sandwiches on brown bread on repeat (always me in 2024).And, they don’t contribute to something that I now know writing must be for me - clever, witty, enriching, educating and, if at all possible, a hoot to boot. I get we don’t all need this from our story tellers but I do - especially the mother ones. I like to see the mother and her former (and future) self intertwined there in those pages, and I like to add my own layer of fantasy and fiction as I marvel at what they’ve created.
And so, I also have a deeply suspicious vibe about all the writing about motherhood around at present and the fine line between what is interesting and contributory vs what is (for me, any way), too simple reflection. This blog started with reflections - in its methodology, these reflections are of a woman sewn together and desperate not to lose the inarticulate feelings and affects of the ruptures of new mom life with a third baby. My desperation, I believe, is key to the workings of the words and intrinsic to the repetition, the trauma and the circling of the story. And whether you like the story or not, the leaky tits and bloody pads are meant to take me back there but I’m not sure what they’re meant to achieve for anyone else and, as a writer, I’m not sure it’s my role to make you like it. In fact, I believe that writing is, as any art form, for you and to improve it and revel in its creation is also, for you. And so, I suppose it’s also ok for me to not be fully satiated by all reading and honestly, as I’m suggesting about others, I guess I should also sit down when I’m not feeling what I’m reading - this is the joy of choice, right and perhaps, genre?
And, as another dear friend writes (her substack is the first one on the list below): “Read yourself as fiction as well as fact” and I couldn’t agree more. And perhaps one day, my long coming memoir-esque work will come together somewhere else than these pages and these late night ramblings based almost entirely on mood!
Please do check out these writer mother substacks if you’re looking for some interesting fodder from writers who are also mothers from SA and the diaspora. There are so many more and I wish I could offer them all here but it’s almost midnight and those Nutella sandwiches aren’t going to pack themselves in the morning!
A few good reads:
Birthing while black (If you’d like the full PDF please reach out and I’ll share it)
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