Product Description

In this ground-breaking anthology, Ariel Gore and Bee Lavender ask real moms from Web site designers to tattoo-clad waitresses to laugh, cry, scream, and shout about motherhood. Allison Crews fights to have a voice and be recognized as a teen mother. Angela Morrill eschews both doctors and midwife and gives birth at home. Kimberly Bright draws compelling comparisons between "raising a toddler and having a psychotic boyfriend. " For every young mom, Breeder offers inspiration, strength, wisdom, and humor. Contributors include Allison Crews, Beth Lucht, Ayun Halliday, Katie Granju, Peri Escarda, Allison Abner, and Kimberly Bright. "

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #447562 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-20
• Released on: 2001-03-20
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .89" h x 5.54" w x 7.52" l, .59 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Amazon.com
The voices of mothers--the real in-the-trenches voices of mothers--always threaten the status quo. Tell the truth about your ambivalence, rage, and passion--whether about miscarriage, breast pumps, or (as profiled here) your welfare-avoidance job as a stripper--and watch the general public recoil. But as every mother knows, there is nothing more comforting than finding another woman who is willing to sit in your kitchen and share the honest-to-God truth about mothering. So it takes a lot of best-girlfriend loyalty to write the gut-wrenching motherhood stories that you'll find in Breeder. And fortunately, coeditors Bee Lavender and Ariel Gore (The Hip Mama Survival Guide, The Mother Trip) had enough grit and pluck to get them published. (Both women are also the editors of the online and print magazine Hip Mama.)

This collection of Gen-X essays is especially courageous because of all the taboos it shatters. Writer Julie Jameson confesses that she was talking on the phone with her mom when she looked up and discovered that her teething son had found her newly purchased vibrator and was gnawing on the tip. Gayle Brandeis boasts about the heroic treks she's taken through the hidden folds of her children's bottoms, searching for pinworms like a cave explorer. Sara Manns writes about the desire to have a child with her lesbian wife, which leads her through the terrain of sperm donors, then miscarriage, and finally international adoption. And we can all be grateful to Peri Escarda for helping us find the "Perfect Name" to offer a daughter when she points between her legs and asks, "What's dat?"

Not all the stories are masterfully rendered. Some rely on raw urgency, such as Alex McCall's "Bomb Threat," in which she anxiously retrieves her daughter from a federal-building childcare facility on the same day as the Oklahoma City bombing. Yet many offer mature crafting as well as tender narration. When Min Jin Lee became pregnant, she thought about her own Korean immigrant upbringing and her downtrodden mother's enormous sacrifices. She writes, "These were my fears: One day my child would feel the need to make my life whole through her accomplishments, or worse, as an adult, she would be unable to ever remember me smiling at her as a little girl." Jessica Rigney writes a chillingly exquisite story about altering her family's legacy of suicide and silence through the conscious mothering of her son. These are the rough-and-ready voices of the next wave of motherhood, and like the generation of feminists before them, they continue to break new, fertile ground. One can hardly wait to hear the voices of their daughters. --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly
Contrary to the intent of editors Gore and Lavender of the zine Hip Mama, this collection of essays by Gen-X writers proves that motherhood is much the same no matter what generation one is from. Many of the essays attempt to rely on the strength of their stories to keep the reader involved, but the stories are often carelessly written, predictable and generic. Among the exceptions is "Learning to Surf," in which Jennifer Savage thoughtfully recounts her journey from being 22-year-old single mom and punk rocker to a married mother of three learning to surf. Other stories are also unusual, but less reflective. "When I Was Garbage," Allison Crews's sangfroid account of her teenage pregnancy, does not explain how Crews was able to simply deny that she was pregnant for the first 16 weeks. "On the Road (with baby)" by China is equally unsatisfying, never illuminating why the author chose to hitchhike across the U.S. with her baby in tow for the first eight months of her daughter's life. Sadly, the recurrent themes sounded by these Gen-X voices alienation, economic insecurity and the importance of health insurance ("the beauty of health insurance tolls like a soft, sweet chime at three in the morning," writes Joy Castro) are never articulated clearly enough to express what makes this generation different from those that came before.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Gore (The Mother Trip, LJ 5/15/00) and Lavender, founding editor of HipMama 'zine and managing director of HipMama.com, respectively, have collected 36 short parenting tales from Gen-X moms. Rich/poor, lesbian/straight, single/married dozens of different lifestyles are represented here with the common theme of choosing motherhood young while pursuing other goals. These are not 35-and-clock-ticking, overly educated, late-in-life moms but the daughters of the baby boomers, who sought motherhood as students, employees, and single girls. Some chapters are poignant (Beth Kohl Feinerman's lament about not being able to conceive after taking birth control pills for years), while others are very funny (Kimberly Bright's comparisons of a toddler to a psychotic boyfriend). The writers are self-satisfied but honestly so; here are women who chose to follow their dreams without trading on others. A worthy acquisition that includes a foreword by nationally syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.