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
]]>We need time to ourselves, moments of awareness, connections, meaningful work. We need cheap art, good sex, nights at the bowling alley and days at the beach. We need good coffee, hearty meals, lush gardens and time to relax and enjoy our lives without worrying so much that we are good enough mothers or skinny enough girlfriends or wives. We need to take care of ourselves so that we can mother our children soulfully and lead lives worth living.Amen, sister. --Gail Hudson ]]>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal <w:Zoom>0 <w:PunctuationKerning /> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas /> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables /> <w:SnapToGridInCell /> <w:WrapTextWithPunct /> <w:UseAsianBreakRules /> <w:DontGrowAutofit /> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> <![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} <![endif]-->
Brand-new stories by: Gigi Little, Justin Hocking, Christopher Bolton, Jess Walter, Monica Drake, Jamie S. Rich (illustrated by Joelle Jones), Dan DeWeese, Zoe Trope, Luciana Lopez, Karen Karbo, Bill Cameron, Ariel Gore, Floyd Skloot, Megan Kruse, Kimberly Warner-Cohen, and Jonathan Selwood.
Editor Kevin Sampsell is a bookstore employee and writer. He is the author of a short story collection, Creamy Bullets (Chiasmus Press), and the upcoming memoir The Suitcase (HarperPerennial, summer 2009). He is also the editor of The Insomniac Reader (Manic D Press) and the publisher of the micropress Future Tense Books.
]]>