17 July 2008

Can you name a mothering memoir by a non-white woman?

Bitch magazine asks the question with the apt tagline, "Ain't I a Mommy?"

Mothering memoirs have been a hot commodity in the past several years, most noticeably since Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions appeared in 1993. Article author Deesha Philyaw spoke to a published African-American author and new mother who approached her agent with a similar idea, and was told "Please don't," because there was a glut of mommy memoirs on the market.

But how many women of color have participated in this purported glut? I've been reading the genre since 1999 and have kept an eye on the market pretty closely since then, and frankly I can't name one mommy memoir by a woman of color. I can't name one mommy memoir that's written by an unmarried or unpartnered mother, either, other than Lammott's. Even the funny or ironical ones, the ones discussing motherhood as a largely unpleasant and unexpectedly difficult endeavor, are written by mothers who have help around the house: a spouse or partner (usually one with a lucrative job) or a nanny. Or both.

And beyond that, how many parenting authors, parenting journalists (in magazines and with paid online gigs, as opposed to unpaid bloggers), and television and radio parenting experts are women of color?

There are voices missing in the discourse here: those of women of color, lower-income women, single women, immigrant women. New mommy memoirs are appearing all the time, but they're all by the same white woman learning how to balance the challenges of motherhood with marriage, her relationship with her own mother, and parallel parking the new minivan she had to buy. The only thing that changes is the setting: one is in New York, while another is in Los Angeles.

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