The Last Poem I Loved : “The Planned Child” by Sharon Olds
The poem is no longer a part of the book I own. I ripped it out, had it framed, and nailed it to the wall right next to the door in our master bedroom.
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Posts Tagged: parenthood
Beneath a Pile of Tulle and Tiaras: Talking with Devorah Blachor
Devorah Blachor discusses The Feminist’s Guide to Raising a Little Princess, princess culture in America and abroad, and publishing a book on feminism in the current political climate.
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The Aura of Baby Einstein, the Child, the Toy
If there is no distinction between show and commercial, ethics and entertainment, what kind of distinctions, if any, exists between her imaginary play, her consumer life, and our reality?
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The Election and the Ash Borer
Does it matter what words a sign says when a symbol says so much more? A white X. A carved swastika. Things get torn down from less.
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Reading Colum McCann to My Daughter
I think we need to listen closer for the stories that shake us up the most … and then share them and talk about them with the people we love. And the people we don’t.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Amy Benson
Our American obsession with the personal and individual has made us the tremendous resource consumers we are in the world.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Raising A Feminist Son
I think about the birth of Mosley, and all of the dreams I already have for him at the ripe age of one. I know how I want him to see me—strong, smart, capable of anything and everything. This is how I want him to see all women, but me especially.
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The Eternal Hunt for Relevance: Doree Shafrir Discusses Startup
Doree Shafrir discusses her debut novel, Startup, the differences between journalism and fiction, and why she chose to tell this particular story.
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Storytelling Is a Search: An Interview with Sequoia Nagamatsu
Sequoia Nagamatsu discusses his debut collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, grief as a character, and the intersection of ancient myth and the modern world.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Savage Mind, Pt. 1
The violence came in and we were not just in danger of being victims of it. We were in danger of being violent ourselves.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Khadijah Queen
Khadijah Queen about her new collection I’m So Fine, the importance of including sexual assault as a part of everyday life, and how the poems in the collection found their form.
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The Rumpus Interview with Joshua Mohr
Joshua Mohr discusses his memoir Sirens, writing for his daughter, and why he values art that trusts its audience.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Pinpricks
Time is king. Believers, agnostics or atheists—humans or not: time rules us. We submit to it, surrender to it, and are shaped by it.
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The Rumpus Interview with Emily Raboteau
Emily Raboteau discusses her essay, “Know Your Rights!” from the collection, The Fire This Time, what she loves about motherhood, and why it’s time for White America to get uncomfortable.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
In a political climate in which undocumented immigrants are painted as criminals and rapists and half the country is crying for deportation, this week’s story reminds us that immigrants are fathers who love their daughters, who work hard and send money home to dying mothers, who will go to the ends of the Earth for […]
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What I’ll Tell My Children: On Being ‘F***Able’ under the Regime of President-elect
It’s time to take responsibility for compliancy.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
Motherhood is an all-consuming thing. The sleepless nights, the endless diapers, the undying love, the absurd tasks that must be performed to ease a baby into nap time. But time and energy aren’t the only casualties of motherhood. In our culture, motherhood often demands one’s identity as well, consumes it whole as the woman becomes […]
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What We Lost: Undoing the Fairy Tale Narrative of Adoption
The singular, unavoidable truth about adoption is that it requires the undoing of one family so that another one can come into being.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Carolyn Parkhurst
Carolyn Parkhurst discusses her latest book, Harmony, writing about your personal life and family in fiction, and her fascination with cults.
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FUNNY WOMEN #144: Food Reviews by Third Grader
This refined combination will transport taste buds into a state of euphoria matched only when capturing a rare Mewtwo on Pokémon Go.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with David Rivard
David Rivard discusses his new collection Standoff, writing as both a public and private act, the interiority of reading, and Pokémon GO.
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The Insanity of Eating
I didn’t usually consider how the binge felt. I just ate until I couldn’t eat anymore.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview with Ramona Ausubel
I find tremendous hope in the act of storytelling—the way we can redirect energy, to reclaim history, to build back lives that have been otherwise upset.
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Voices on Addiction: Mother’s Day
I will always feel a little broken. Intellectually, I know her disease is “not my fault.” But I’m her mother. I will always partially feel the blame.
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Past the Break
Past the break lies motherhood as I understand it: the rawest life that lifts and falls and crashes against beauty, and the eternal potential for heartbreak.
...moreThanks, Alopecia Universalis
Someday, will it be not myself but my daughter that I hold? At Lit Hub, Helen Phillips, author of The Beautiful Bureaucrat and the newly released Some Possible Solutions, writes about parenting while (overly?) conscious of the critical eye, self-projected or otherwise, and finding moments of respite in the wonderful entropy of it all.
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The Rumpus Interview with Asali Solomon
Asali Solomon discusses her debut novel, Disgruntled, narrative structure, the mythology of memory and place, and returning to Philadelphia after years away.
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Breaking and Burning
They pin him down and I stick him. I am relentless. This disease is relentless. And I am so pissed off.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Anne Enright
Anne Enright, author of, most recently, the novel The Green Road, talks with Elizabeth Isadora Gold about motherhood in reality and in fiction, and writing beyond labels and easy definitions.
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