After a panic attack nearly made him lose control on the highway, Mark Anthony Neal continued to bottle up his anxiety and pretend everything was fine. Years later, when he secretly started therapy, he unpacked how the pressures of Black masculinity led him to a mental health crisis.
Mark Anthony Neal is a professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University, and a scholar of Black masculinity. He’s written a book about how race, class, and gender impact Black fathers in America, including himself! Mark Anthony Neal may be an academic, but Save a Seat for Me: Notes on American Fatherhood is a total page-turner.
My thriller about the pressure on women to smile through pain is coming on October 20. There are so many themes in Wedlocked that I know you’ll love if you’re a fan of LST. Plus, the cast is incredible and the custom scoring music is haunting and creepy in the best way 👻 Pre-order now on any audiobook app below to get Wedlocked as soon as it drops.
We’ve done a lot of episodes about race and parenthood. One of our most popular is about how to talk with kids about race. Listen below.
… the pressure to be a perfect parent. If this sounds familiar, we’d love to hear your story! If you’re already a member of LST+, head over to our Discord. If not, what’re you waiting for?
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This week I’m thrilled to bring you artwork from listener Gabriela Vainsencher. Gabriela is a visual artist whose work often focuses on motherhood.
With “Biological / Career Clock #1,” she depicts something I think a lot of us have felt keenly: the tug between career and family. Gabriela will describe where the inspiration for this piece better than I can, so I’ll let her take it from here.
I am about to describe a worn-out epiphany: Living in New York in my 20s and early 30s and pursuing a career in the arts, I felt zero pressure to become a mother, even though it was clear to me that was something I wanted for myself in the “long run”. But as my 35th year was approaching I began to realize that fertile time was a finite and unknown quantity. Meanwhile, my career ambitions were not yet (are not yet, possibly will never be) satiated. I suddenly saw I may never get to that imaginary vanishing point in which everything in my life was “set up” enough for me to make the leap into the unknown of motherhood. As many women are, I was haunted by the prospect of being dismissed as an artist once I became a mother. In crass terms: would I be seen as a loser for breeding? While it is arguably the best time in history to be a mother and an artist, it is still inarguably harder for mothers and caregivers of young children to participate in the art world than it is for their childless peers.
“Biological / Career Clock #1” depicts the tricky decade that begins right before one becomes 35. The clock hand is shaped in the L gesture to indicate the middle-school sign for “loser” as well as to simulate the hour and minute hands on a traditional clock face. This work celebrates the decade between 34.5 and 45 years old. It is considered “peak earning years”, while also marking the end of the fertile period in most women’s lives. When I made this work I was smack in the middle of this period, pregnant with my second child and experiencing a sudden growth in my career as I was preparing for my first solo exhibition with a New York gallery. Since then I have had my son, who is now three years old, His sister is seven. I am still juggling my ambition and my desire to be with my kids. I have learned to be (a little) more patient with myself and with them, and I no longer look at my biological clock so often.
Thanks, Gabriela, for sharing your personal and deeply relatable story with us!
Okay, that’s all for now!
XO, Hillary
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