Female writers discuss the rise of literature on motherhood and the need to break free from literary pigeonholing.

Is there a fashion of books about maternity? What benefits or affects pigeonhole women’s writing What do they tell about their experience of being or not being mothers? Why do such universal themes come to be minimized from the literary canon to mere soap operas or cheesy narratives?

These were some of the questions that female writers Elvira Liceaga, Isabel Zapata, Ave Barrera, Brenda Morales Muñoz and María Antonieta Mendívil were raised at the table “The (not) mothers“, organized by the Xavier Villaurrutia Literary Creation Center of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL).

At the event, held on Monday afternoon as part of the cycle Leámoslasthe writers agreed that more than a fashion, the rise of texts that address the various motherhood experiences o not maternity They have gained ground thanks to the feminist movements that are putting the issue on the table, turning around that old habit of the literary canon of minimizing these feminine experiences, cataloging them as corny or irrelevant to the universal experience.

“Something interesting is happening with this fashion sensation it is not, it is that we are talking about the subject in a media way, like never before; there are a lot of publications and, perhaps there were before, but they were more dispersed and they were in the bubble of feminist texts, to which my mother surely never had access; the subject is now out there, they are talking about it at Christmas dinners, it is approached in a different way and I think it is extremely important, both for the maternity decisionas well as non-maternity because, for the first time, we have the possibility of feeling accompanied in the decision we have made”, commented the writer Ave Barrera.

Today we present our new cycle Ciclo Leámoslas with the theme:

The (not) mothers.

Participants: Elvira Liceaga, Isabel Zapata, Ave Barrera and Brenda Morales Muñoz.

Moderated by: María Antonieta Mendívil.

Don’t miss our upcoming events. pic.twitter.com/5tEohz0mc1

— Xavier Villaurrutia Literary Creation Center (@CCLXV) May 9, 2023

the author of Restoration (Lost Paradise, 2019) and coordinator with Lola Horner of the collective book Ways of writing and being / not being a mother (Paradise Lost, 2021) pointed out that the motherhood experience or the decision not to exercise it is not a new topic in the mexican literaturebut it has been consolidated thanks to the links that have been created between current Mexican writers, an exchange that would not have been possible a few decades ago:

“I realize when I read Revengethese women’s books that they were silenced by the canon, that many of them wrote from isolation, they were alone; her writing was a way of conversing with the world, but she was a voice in a vacuum, it was very rare to have a correspondence between two women; Any of the decisions, the way in which they handled their maternity or the decision to say no, they did without correspondence, without dialogue and it is terrible; In the present we have the opportunity to feel accompanied and say: ‘I am in this dilemma, but so and so is too’”.

As Mother’s Day is approaching, I leave you my book “Mom is a black animal that goes long through the white bedrooms”, with the extraordinary cover with a work by Louise Bourgeois. free download pic.twitter.com/1I0zxPLIeD

— Esther M. Garcia (@Tete_GarciaG) May 9, 2023

It is a universal and complex issue.

However, from the academy or the so-called canonical literature these issues continue to be stigmatized or relegated to the world of the domestic, despite the fact that it is a universal and complex subject, which makes it a very literary subject, he maintained Isabella Zapataauthor of In Vitro (Almadía, 2021), an essay that brings together a collection of short texts where the writer recounts her experience of pregnancy and motherhood.

“I have heard those criticisms of ‘ya chole with her maternity things’, as if it were something that runs out very quickly, when it is a universal theme, in the sense that we are all born of women, we all have that immediate experience of have a mother It is not an alien subject for anyone, it is much less alien than others that are considered universal and that are on the tables of universal literature in bookstores and that are not at all experiences as widespread as motherhood”, said the essayist and editor who since 2020 teaches the workshop Small Labors. Writing from motherhooda space in which women, with or without experience in writing, write and read about the subject.

From the academy, he also shared Brenda Morales Muñoza specialist in contemporary Latin American narrative and professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, there are some efforts to stop classifying or giving surnames to writings made by women, although there are “many demands for works that are not written by men.” heteronormative white males.

🧿 Thank you, friends! 🫶🏾

— Isabel Zapata (@bestiecilla) May 9, 2023

The problem, raised by the writer Elvira Liceagais that the literary labelsalmost always used as a strategy of marketing, are a trap, because when a book is classified as maternity one tends to think that it is talking about what should be and not about the experience of a process that contains an infinity of topics. “In my short experience, when they tell you it’s a book about motherhood, they think it’s about what mothers should be, not about mothers’ experiences, and that’s where they’re wrong,” he said.

the author of The Watchers (Lumen, 2023) added that, on the other hand, labels can work as a strategy to awaken the readers’ interest on those topics. “There are also exciting tags. When English reggaeton already exists, I really want to listen to it, just as I also want to read the literature from other dissident neighborhoods, I’m curious to see what’s under those labels… As long as we know they’re a trap, let’s accept them, Let’s play with them, collapsing them all the time,” he said.

From the readers side, it can also work as a guide, agreed Marie Antoinette Mendivilmoderator of the meeting: “It is not a trend, but for the first time someone is naming it and they are representing us in all the contradictions that we feel when living motherhood.”

Among other topics, the authors also shared their experiences on how motherhood has influenced his writing.

The specialist in contemporary Latin American narrative @Brenmoragraduated from @UNAM_MXstudies fictional representations about maternity. pic.twitter.com/byhvL5SdDi

— Literature IMBAL (@literaturainba) May 4, 2023

End the myth of the stepmother

The writer Barrier Birdwho decided not to be a mother, but collaborates in the care of her partner’s child, raised the need to rethink the romanticized mother figures or stigmatizing roles within the traditional narrativelike the role of the stepmother. “In many of the original fairy tales, the stepmother was actually the mother, but she can’t eat the child, when it’s so interesting to also show the cruelty of that character,” she said.

“We have to subvert all those stigmas and have a reinterpretation of the co-mother or of the co-motheringwhich is most necessary in this world because I fit into a family dynamic in which I can give him an extra paw to take care of the kid and he knows that he has one more adult to trust, “he added.