Myrl Coulter

Heather Birrell

Julie Booker

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden

There isn't a mother who hasn't thought of herself as stationed far outside maternity's central zone--that imaginary place where all the babies are cooing, bananas are never bruised, and every woman is comfortable enough in her own skin to disregard a magazine's blaring provocation: Are You Mom Enough? In this original and sometimes provocative collection of essays, Saleema Nawaz, Alison Pick, Nancy Jo Cullen, Carrie Snyder, and many others explore the boundaries of contemporary motherhood. There are the women who have had too many children or not enough. There are women for whom motherhood is a fork in the road, encountered with contradictory emotions. And there are those who have made the conscious choice not to have children and then find themselves defined by that decision. Here some of Canada's best writers face down motherhood from the other side of the picket fence. The M Word. It means something to every woman. Exactly what it means is rarely simple. -- Provided by publisher.

Conversations about Motherhood

The M Word

In the stories of Mad Hope , Journey Prize winner Heather Birrell finds the heart of her characters and lets them lead us into worlds both recognizable and alarming. A science teacher and former doctor is forced to re-examine the role he played in Ceau+Öescu's Romania after a student makes a shocking request; a tragic plane crash becomes the basis for a meditation on motherhood and its discontents; women in an online chat group share (and overshare) their anxieties and personal histories; and a chance encounter in a waiting room tests the ties that bind us. Using precise, inventive language, Birrell creates astute and empathetic portraits of people we thought we knew - and deftly captures the lovely, maddening mess of being human.

Stories

Mad Hope

Kleptomaniacs, convicts, roof-walkers and homicidal hippies: here are children and adults, men and women, all struggling to define themselves. The stories in I know you are but what am I? are like snow domes - perfect little self-contained worlds that you can hold in your hand, turn upside down, shake until meaning settles in a hundred different ways. Young Misha learns about the complexities of grownup love when his mother is bitten by a stingray. Oldrick must come to terms with his ex-girlfriend's new lover and a belligerent barista in the midst of a smelly garbage strike. Bus-bound Marion, in love with a married man, finds solace in conversation with a convict and home-schooled Rational gets a tutor and learns that his 'hunker in the bunker' family isn't quite what he thought it was. 'Heather Birrell's sentences conjure worlds. These stories scintillate. Smart, sharp, alluring, they're full of the chance encounters, mysteries, missed connections and unexpected tenderness of contemporary life.' - Catherine Bush

Heather Birrell

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