Nuria Labari said in
The Best Mother in the World
(Random House Literature) that to write about motherhood it seems essential to betray oneself, or one's child, or both.
Betrayal or not, the truth is that it seems difficult to be able to do it without rolling up your sleeves and being willing to get dirty crossing a path that sometimes gets muddy.
The eight selected books belong to authors who dare to explore the complexity of motherhood, daughterhood
or
family, in its broadest sense.
From a pregnancy diary to reflections on identity and the search for motherhood or topics such as terror, psychological violence, family complexity or the search for beauty and creativity as salvation when motherhood does not come, are intertwined in this proposal. of readings.
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“I am not enough”: five limiting beliefs in motherhood and how to manage them
'Waiting Time' (Trap), by Carme Riera
“Time seems less elusive when you leave a written record of its passage,” writes Carme Riera in
Waiting Time
, a beautiful pregnancy diary, published by Lumen in 1998 and now republished by the small publishing house Trampa.
Riera's was the first pregnancy diary published in Spain; however, despite its value, it has not been a sufficiently explored format.
With exceptions, such as
9 Moons
by Gabriela Wiener or the prolific blogosphere, which for more than a decade was dotted with the most diverse journals, including conception and postpartum, we do not have a significant presence of this type of literature.
Carme Riera left a record of a unique experience, her own, but without knowing it she was also leaving a story of great historical and literary value.
Her doubts and fears are still valid for those who go through motherhood almost four decades later.
Also her intelligent reflections on issues such as the complex relationship of motherhood with feminism, the lack of maternal references in literature or the physical and emotional transformation that occurs in that new and amazing passage of time that is pregnancy.
'The sky of the jungle' (Lava), by Elaine Vilar Madruga
There are no narrative limits in
The Jungle Sky
.
In its pages beat all the horrors of the world, even those that one does not dare to pronounce out loud.
Elaine Vilar Madruga already warns us at the beginning: “This is a book about motherhood.
In plural.
Like each and every one of the different mothers there are, have been and will be in the world.
All united and, at the same time, separated by the fundamental event of life, one that can only occur in the body.
And it is also a book of bodies, fear and hunger.”
And so it is: the writer dares to investigate the complexities of motherhood through a horror story set in a hungry jungle mother who demands the sacrifice of the children she wants.
“The jungle has marked so many kids that I don't remember how many.”
Santa, the dog, the old woman, Ifigenia and Romina give body and voice to female characters without options, trapped in a perverse system.
'The Other Daughter' (Cabaret Voltaire), by Annie Ernaux
Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux writes to Ginette, her dead sister she never knew, in
The Other Daughter
.
“You had been dead for two and a half years when I was born.
You are the creature of heaven, the invisible little girl who is never talked about, the one absent from all conversations.
The secret".
All families hide some secret and Ernaux's also has its own.
The author discovers at the age of 10 that she had a sister, who died of diphtheria two years before her birth, and from that moment on she becomes a detective in her own environment.
She begins to investigate topics such as the transformation that the loss of a child entails for parents, the reason for the silence around death or the place occupied by the daughter who is born after a loss.
This is a book about silences, sadness and an invisible pain capable of transforming everything.
'Carapace' (Three Sisters), by Lisa Ginzburg
Can the wound felt by being an orphan be healed without being one?
In
Carazón
, translated into Spanish by Natalia Zarco, and a finalist for the LXXV Strega Prize—the highest literary award that can be won in Italy—Lisa Ginzburg examines the impact of childhood experiences on the construction of identity and the lack of adulthood.
The story focuses on the connection created between Maddi and Nina, two sisters with very different characters, marked by a complex childhood: a loving mother, but who leaves the family home to start a new life with another couple;
and a father overcome by life who spends his time on work, drugs and the search for love.
Both will witness the collapse of a life that is no longer the construction of a new reality: they will change their home, their environment and will be raised until they come of age by a caregiver.
In between, specific meetings with his mother and visits from her father on weekends.
Natalia Ginzburg's granddaughter has written a novel in which everyone runs away without knowing it.
Relaxing at homeEva-Katalin (Getty Images)
'Daddy loves us' (Trojan Horse), by Leticia G. Domínguez
Writing about the traumas that the family leaves on the bodies, like the layers of sediment that give shape to a rock, is an act of courage, but also of generosity.
Leticia G. Domínguez has carved in
Daddy Loves Us
a story that is, in reality, the story of many families: hierarchies, normalized abuse, psychological violence, harmful conventions and broken self-esteem.
Everything happens through the office of Gomes, the therapist who remains silent and intervenes, according to what his patient - the narrator of the story - is recounting about his past, which is also his present.
Nothing is coincidental in this masterful first novel that questions the family institution, in its darkest version, and rebels against it to free itself from its heavy burden.
'Diary of an Embroiderer' (Lumen), by Miss Lylo
In 2007, Loly Ghirardi (Miss Lylo on Instagram) became pregnant, but lost her baby shortly after.
The losses occurred several more times until her motherhood became a true obsession for her.
To alleviate the anguish she began to embroider.
And it turned out that by embroidering she found the hug and peace she needed.
“If I had had to put those years, between 2007 and 2015, into words, I would have undoubtedly said loneliness and crying, but also embroidering,” she writes in
Diario de una embroiderera
, a book in which she has narrated her experience in the search for a motherhood that never came and the loving encounter with this art.
Her pages are full of images of luminous embroidery, as well as her words of hope for those who are grieving for not motherhood.
'You inhabited this womb' (Cicely editorial), by Cristina Heredero
“I say I'm a mother and it seems like the earth is getting a little bigger.
I am a mother on this / earth and it seems that I have grown bigger,” says one of Cristina Heredero's verses in
Habitaste esteutero
.
Here we find places traveled by all mothers: desire, fears, uncertainties, guilt, family roots - which nourish, shape and also suffocate.
But in this journey to the most universal experience—we all inhabit a womb—Heirero knows that the personal is political.
And poetic.
It details what it meant to navigate the path in a pandemic (“With a mask I knew that there was a girl in my womb”), letting us into her birth (“I gave birth to my little girl with a mask / half breathing / with all the sleepy forces in a bed and the nurses with masks looking at my vagina.
We accompany her in breastfeeding and think with her about the “ownership” of her children (“The girl is she”).
In these 35 poems, divided into three parts – Estrus, Gestar and Alumbrar – there is also space for topics such as inspiration, the need to write or the cycle of life.
In
You inhabited this womb,
each word is a spasm in the lung to avoid drowning in the immensity of life.
'The bookstore and the goddess' (Lumen), by Paula Vázquez
If in
The Stars
(Tránsito) Paula Vázquez's story of her mother's death helps her recognize her own “
childhood
,” in
The Bookstore and the Goddess
this loss is the starting point for new desires and vital objectives: opening a bookstore, having a child, feeling like you belong in a place.
The founder of the Lata Peinada bookstore in Barcelona builds in this
memoir
a “cartography of losses” in her search for a pregnancy that does not come.
“Losses are an event that is imposed on us by default or by the wisdom of nature.
"They do not appear in public discussion or in conversations between women."
It is also an accurate reflection on current motherhood (“We must fight to prevent motherhood from becoming a privilege”), which intertwines beautifully with writing and the process of creating.
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