Review: Mothers and Other Fictional Characters

A memoir in essays by Nicole Graev Lipson

We have a running joke in my family. When one of us tries to offer advice or solve a problem, we yell you’re not a mother!

I don’t know who first said this, but someone did, genuinely, as a way of explaining that the “others” of us would never understand x problem without first being a mother. It sounds like a hurtful thing to rehash, but somehow it’s funny, to us.

I am not a mother, but I am endlessly fascinated with the relationship between mothers and daughters. I will probably never personally know the burden and joy of motherhood, but I can sense the enormity of it. I think these dynamics are the key to understanding so much about women today. It’s not only whether we decide to have children, but also correcting inequality at home and at work, setting boundaries, knowing our needs and limitations…

So when I read an excerpt of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters in Mother Tongue magazine, I wrote to author Nicole Graev Lipson immediately to request an advanced copy. The book will be out in March and you can pre-order here.

The essays are about being a mother, yes. But they are also about being a woman and a writer. A daughter, a friend, a wife. It is very much about the competing responsibilities of all of those roles, and the complications and contradictions that motherhood introduces.

The book is labeled a “memoir in essays” and delves into many hot topics (trans identity, fetal personhood, even Alice Munro) but with a gentleness and perspective so unique I dare people of any political persuasion to find fault. In particular, “As They Like It” examines gender identity through the author’s experiences teaching Shakespeare (in which she asked her students “what does it mean that Rosalind can only feel safe in the forest dressed as a boy?” — a question so belonging to our man or bear? predicament that it hurts) and raising a “tomboy” daughter. She explains being supportive of daughter’s rejection of gender stereotypes, and then worried about a slightly more aggressive turn against femininity: “Where’s the line, I begin to wonder, between a healthy rejection of female stereotypes and misogyny absorbed and turned inward?”

In “Very Nice Blastocysts” Lipson shares the emotional journey parting with embryos she froze but did not need, explaining the potential she felt they held while also being pro-choice.

How are we to orient ourselves to them, we who donate to Planned Parenthood, who flew into fury watching a parade of white male governors sign portentous “heartbeat” bills banning abortion at a stage when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant?

I struggled with this essay quite a bit; at the first mention of the potential of the embryos I bristled, thinking of all the problems that cascade from such thinking. But the essay was strictly personal. The embryos were meaningful to the author, and she did not imply that the meaning she had given them should be applied legally to every embryo in America.

The problem I often see in any debate related to reproductive rights is that it is dangerous for the pro-choice side to give an inch. To say that an embryo is full of potential opens the door to fetal personhood laws, abortion bans and the end of IVF. To admit to being a little sad after an elective abortion is to perpetuate the universal regret myth (followed by the condescending argument that abortion laws “protect” women from themselves). But the answer to these problems is to allow the experience to be personal to each individual, and of course, to not create laws that remove the possibility of making personal choices. And so, for me, Lipson’s journey as she shared it here was effective. I’m not optimistic that the anti-choice side will ever give ground, but it would be nice if pro-choicers who have had to make difficult decisions could speak openly about their experiences.

A book about motherhood would be lacking if it did not include a healthy dose of guilt, and I enjoyed the framing here (for obvious reasons) of “good” and “bad” mothers. In “Thinkers Who Mother,” Lipson includes an approachable analysis of Munro’s “My Mother’s Dream,” in which the mother Jill drugs her baby. Lipson concludes this makes Jill a “real mother” rather than a bad one: “in the fullness of her reality, there’s space for darkness, frailty, desperation—even grave misjudgement.” (This essay does not address the recent news about the abuse of Alice Munro’s daughter, Andrea).

This essay also gets to the heart of what I would like to be recognized as an imagined conflict between mothers and non-mothers. Yes, non-mothers cannot know the responsibility of motherhood (although Lipson’s depiction here is one of the best I’ve ever read), but we can be a sounding board for mothers. And we can be patient and supportive friends during the early days of motherhood, when there may be little time for us.

“Thinkers Who Mothers” debunks the persistent idea that mothers are zombies acting on instinct alone and unable to use their brains, except to figure out what to make for dinner or when to do the laundry (which I’d argue most women are doing all the time, mothers or not). This theme is also addressed in “A Place, or a State of Affairs,” which examines the need to be alone to do more of that thinking. As someone who does not have children in part because I require solitude, this one was deeply compelling. The author asks herself, “If you yearn so deeply for solitude, is it possible you shouldn’t have had children.” She admits “the asking has been like a riptide through my blood.”

The recurring theme of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is its eagerness to turn over complicated questions, to address the nuance in these so-called controversial topics, and ultimately to allow mothers to be seen as people, too. Five stars.