mothers
-
Mother Moore
In Hazlitt, Naomi Skwarna writes about using the writing of Lorrie Moore as a mother substitute: Living without a mother is a freedom by turns radical and excruciating. It is swimming in the ocean, and Moore’s writing was what made…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Darcey Steinke
Darcey Steinke talks about her new novel, Sister Golden Hair, motherlessness, the Southern cult of femininity, and how becoming a woman has changed since she came of age in a small city in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
-
The Saturday Rumpus Review of Wild
In simplicity there is truth, and being out in wide open spaces often has a way, like high-speed rail, to bring us back to simple things.
-
The Big Idea: Eula Biss
On Immunity author Eula Biss speaks to Suzanne Koven about mythology, personal freedom, and the history of vaccines.
-
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Cold Blue
On freezing winter nights, Cathy Bell finds some small respite from the pain of migraines and maternal estrangement.
-
If It’s Not One Thing, It’s A Mother
My mother stood before me in her quilted bathrobe, dark hair held back in a ponytail, her eyes sunken, grey. I felt like the narrator of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, who, startled out of sleep, opens his eyes to behold the…
-
Survivors
The history of the whole world can be told as the stories of conquerors and the conquered—the former consumed with thoughts of destiny and tyranny, the latter knowing only the persistence of time and the pure grit of bodies.
-
The Rumpus Late Nite Poetry Show: Rachel Zucker
In Episode 4 of The Rumpus Late Nite Poetry Show, Dave Roderick sits down with poet Rachel Zucker to talk about her latest collection, The Pedestrians, what makes for good comedy, and word associations.
-
Here Everything Is Possible
My mother died suddenly at a dining room table, in the middle of a wonderful meal, surrounded by a large, extended family that loved her. One minute she was completely immersed in the world—talking, laughing, eating—and the next minute she…
-
Litany for My Mother’s Body
My mother’s body horrified me. Nine years old, I watched her dress. Her belly was rippled and sagged and scarred—a used-up bag of nothing.
-
Hearing Mandarin, Speaking English
In middle school, “Yo Mama” jokes infuriated me. My mother was so Chinese she couldn’t eat a hamburger without pinching her nose. She was so Chinese she wore bamboo slippers. In a stunning essay for the Michigan Daily, Carlina Duan writes…
