Double Lives

Writing and Motherhood

Shannon Cowan, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Cathy Stonehouse

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780773533776
• eBook ISBN:
  9780773577503
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Social Sciences

Writing is intellectual, solitary work, and mothering too often seen as its antithesis. Marni Jackson's The Mother Zone, published in 1992, gave many readers their first insights into the life of a mother/writer. Yet despite having writers such as Adrienne Rich, Alice Munro, Tillie Olsen and Margaret Laurence to guide and inspire them, mothers who are writers still often feel overwhelmed - even in the 21st century, a writer new to mothering may wonder if she will ever write again. In Double Lives, the first Canadian literary anthology focusing on mothering and writing, twenty-two writers, who range in reputation from seasoned professionals to noteworthy new talents, reveal the intimate challenges and private rewards of nurturing children while pursuing the passion to write. Varying widely in age, marital status, sexual orientation, culture/ethnicity, and philosophical stance, authors such as Di Brandt, Stephanie Bolster, Linda Spalding, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Sharron Proulx-Turner, Sally Ito Rachel Rose and Susan Olding, make significant and illuminating contributions to our understanding of how writer and mother co-exist.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• room To WrITe
• Drafts 1–12 (Not Including 11)
• The Crib and the Desk
• Motherhood and Other Possibilities
• Opposing Forces
• A Double Life
• BecomInG a WriTer
• Other Is the Longest Part of Mothering: Writing and Parenting on the Edge
• A Mother, Writing
• Elements
• & in our languages, mother is the land
• moTHerinG FIrST
• A Mum’s Guide to Outer Space
• The Sun Knows What It Does
• Wearing Different Hats: Mothering, Writing, and Keeping Your Sanity
• Transformations
• THe muse
• Mama’s Voices
• The Joshua Stone
• Motherhood and the Muses
• Dreams: The First, Irreplaceable Maps
• Mother to Vision
• Only a Day to Visit
• worDs OF aDvIce
• Record of a Live Birth, and Other Stories
• Stretch Marks
• Motherlodes, Muses, Mapmakers
• Letters to a Young Mother Who Writes
• About the Authors
• acknowledgments
• Bibliography