33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race, and Themselves

Moses and Peri, who edited Mothers Who Think, an American Book Award.winning
anthology based on a Salon.com column, have gathered some 33 talented mothers
(including writers Rosellen Brown, Janet Fitch, Ayelet Waldman and Ann Hulbert,
among others) discussing aspects of "real motherhood" today. True, most of
their issues.spousal abuse, divorce, cancer, step-parenting, single mothering.
aren't new. Some contributors, like Mariane Pearl, the widow of journalist
Danny Pearl, have even published their thoughts elsewhere. What's magical about
this collection, though, is what happens when such diverse accounts are stitched
together in a single volume: a new picture emerges of what it means to be
a mother in modern America.

Chemo treatments may leave you bald. Your kids may suffer from "KGOY.kids
growing older younger," and as they test your limits, you may find yourself
"morphing into some authoritarian freak." If you're black, people may assume
you're your own child's nanny. But as one woman discovered traveling solo to
Cairo to see a particular set of Roman-era memorial portraits in the Egyptian
Museum, the acknowledgment "of death, of loss, of suffering, as well as of
desire and remembered joy" is all "part of living." Skip the flowers and candy
this Mother's Day, and buy this book instead. Agent, Ellen Levine.

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