For the Ploughshares blog, I wrote about Julia Fine’s The Upstairs House and Makenna Goodman’s The Shame and how I am turning to fiction, in particular a spate of recently published novels that portray the challenges of the postpartum period and early motherhood, to make sense of my attempts to hold together the identities of writer and mother.
“While reading these grim, suspenseful novels in quick succession, I became disquieted by the gothic mode’s ascendancy at representing the challenges of early motherhood, especially for women who desire to nurture young children while producing ambitious academic and creative work. In other words, I wondered, what is it that’s haunting about mothers who want?”