Review by Booklist Review
What is the relationship between motherhood and creativity? Is there a pattern to this complex juncture? To answer these questions, Phillips (James Tiptree, Jr.) delves into the lives of twentieth century artist/writer-mothers like Alice Neel, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Their stories demonstrate two common threads: (1) the importance of time, wherever it might be found, and (2) boundaries and the conviction that making art is a woman's right. Meaty biographical chapters are interspersed with shorter sections on topics like sex and love; the burden placed on women to choose between a life of the mind and a life with children; and the phenomenon of critical success after children grow up. Phillips's insights--like the disconnect between a creative's expectation of unbroken focus and the reality of mothering as a state of constant interruption--are essential, but stacks of quotes from famous writers, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and others turn into litanies. This book offers no formula for success, but identifies in its subjects a shared willingness to break with convention and expectation.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Critic Phillips (James Tiptree Jr.) explores the conflicting demands of being a mother and creating art in this astute look at how trailblazing artists stayed true to their craft. When people imagine artists, Phillips suggests, they picture "solitary concentration." To counter this, the author asks, "What does it mean to create, not... in 'a room of one's own,' but in a shared space?" She examines a wealth of artists' lives and work: American painter Alice Neel, for example, lost two daughters and was coerced into relinquishing her third to disapproving relatives and escaped to Greenwich Village, where she raised her subsequent children with other "orphans of the avante-garde" and created art that was startling in its frank portrayal of maternal unease. South African novelist Doris Lessing is infamous for leaving her children, but Phillips digs through correspondence to reveal a more nuanced account of a woman who lost the legal rights to her children after divorce. Audre Lorde's "open marriage to a gay man," meanwhile, "was a practical way to raise children as a lesbian." Phillips's sharp observations and candor add force to the survey: "Thinking about mothers awakened my desire for safety and conventionality, and some things mothers did made me uncomfortable." The result is a memorable examination of game-changing artists. (Apr.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Phillips (James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon) explores and explodes the interpenetrations among motherhood and authorship--as a profession and a passion--through analyses of women novelists (Ursula Le Guin; Doris Lessing; Audre Lorde; Margaret Mead; Alice Walker). For Phillips, these women's fictional and life stories are anything but conventional, even though each has had to conform, at times and by degrees, to socially constructed images of motherhood. In each chapter, Phillips explores connections between mothering and creative work. Here "mothering" doesn't necessarily mean parenting; rather, it's the extent to which a writer must sacrifice their claim to femininity or family in order to pursue their career. Phillips's book is engaging and accessible, especially when carefully discussing the private life of Lorde (a Black lesbian mother) and its influence on her writing; black-and-white portraits of the novelists are a highlight. VERDICT These constructions are far from new, yet Phillips's powerfully researched, thoughtful, sensitive examinations will be of interest to literary scholars as well as to general readers grappling with their own oscillating creative and pragmatic selves.--Emily Bowles
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An intimate look at motherhood and creativity. Years ago, when her now-college-age children were in elementary school, Phillips, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for James Tiptree, Jr., began wondering if "maternal bliss conspires with maternal guilt to erode creative work." Interweaving personal reflections with biographical sketches of British and North American writers and artists, she considers a question that has vexed them all: "How can I have children without sacrificing my vocation, my perspective, my independence, my mind?" The book takes its title from an accusation made by the in-laws of painter Alice Neel: When she was trying to finish a painting, they claimed, she left her baby on the fire escape. Like Neel, other women struggled to find time and space for mothering: Doris Lessing, Ursula K. Le Guin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Angela Carter, Adrienne Rich, Susan Sontag, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Shirley Jackson are among many whose lives and work Phillips explores. "I've tried to look at the moments when their maternal or creative selves seem to fall apart," writes the author, "when they get lost in the woods and come out--if they do come out--with new insight, and with themselves changed." Their responses to motherhood range from rebellion to celebration. Lessing abandoned her two toddlers, explaining that she was leaving them "to fight economic injustice and racism." She soon longed for them and pleaded with her estranged husband to allow her to see them; after two years, he finally gave in, not without criticizing her political views and unconventional lifestyle. Le Guin, on the other hand, felt nourished by her family, and "she claimed authority by leaving home in her work, writing about male protagonists in invented worlds." Phillips admits there is no simple answer to her overarching question, although A.S. Byatt comes close: "What you have to learn to do is pay complete attention to two things at once." A thoughtful meditation on the intersection of life and art. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
