...no human being is explicitly good or explicitly bad, and asking a character to be relatable all of the time negates the possibility of their being a fully realized human.
It is as if we are falling backward, towards the sky, towards the structural silencing of bannos, and Bath’s words wrap around us like curled balloon string and lead us back toward the ground.
Lipson’s ability to do both with precision and compassion, often within the span of a single essay, will touch readers who are mothers, but also readers like me—and like all of us—who know what it is to have a mother.