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A review by acrickettofillthesilence
Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within by Elif Shafak
1.0
I have two main problems with this book: it's disingenuous and it overgeneralizes.
Overgeneralizations
Elif Shafak really, really loves to tell you about how all writers are. Or maybe it's just how women writers are. They're recluses. They don't get along with other writers. They don't actually think about things like symbolism and motifs. If she was speaking just about herself, I might give her a pass and say, "Okay, so she doesn't think about literary elements as she writes. I probably won't want to read her works, but that's just me." (Notice how I didn't say no one should read her works because of this?)
But no. Every woman writer is the same. None of us think about themes and motifs. None of us like talking to other woman writers. None of us like to go and socialize without using Neil Gaiman quotes to show how cool and edgy our feelings about love are compared to all these basic platitudes about love our friends might offer.
The author spends an awful lot of time talking about how, because she's from Turkey, she's an ambassador between East and West and, thus, the entire world. She's such a multicultural blend that she's willing to hire a nanny from another country like the Phillipines, Moldova, or Bulgaria. (Spoiler alert: She actually hires an Azerbaijani nanny.) She's so international that she spends chapters giving biographies about women authors from "around the world" (i.e. the almost exclusively British and American authors). It's exhausting. And not nearly as comprehensive as she wants to think it is.
Disingenuity
Her book is filled with a metaphor where literal six-inch women represent the different aspects of her personality. When I say literal, I mean literal. At one point she encounters a "Thumbelina" on a plane and asks how the woman will make it through customs once they reach the US.
In a novel, that kind of metaphor where the author perceives the little people influencing their decisions would be fine. It would be within the world of the novel, after all. But when a book's a memoir, getting quite that literal is downright obnoxious. I was half waiting for a big reveal halfway through the book where she tries to show her Thumbelinas to someone and they make her go see a psychiatrist or something.
Conclusions
I had some other issues with this book that I don't feel the need to get into (possibly because they're petty), but I think one of the ultimate issues I had with this book is that I didn't read any of Shafak's novels. If I had, maybe I would have viewed all her descriptions about how cool and edgy she was for wanting to make popcorn an official breakfast food as something other than obnoxious. Maybe I would have thought, lovingly, "Oh, that Elif Shafak, at her shenanigans again." I don't know. A lot of people seem to love this book, so...?
Overgeneralizations
Elif Shafak really, really loves to tell you about how all writers are. Or maybe it's just how women writers are. They're recluses. They don't get along with other writers. They don't actually think about things like symbolism and motifs. If she was speaking just about herself, I might give her a pass and say, "Okay, so she doesn't think about literary elements as she writes. I probably won't want to read her works, but that's just me." (Notice how I didn't say no one should read her works because of this?)
But no. Every woman writer is the same. None of us think about themes and motifs. None of us like talking to other woman writers. None of us like to go and socialize without using Neil Gaiman quotes to show how cool and edgy our feelings about love are compared to all these basic platitudes about love our friends might offer.
The author spends an awful lot of time talking about how, because she's from Turkey, she's an ambassador between East and West and, thus, the entire world. She's such a multicultural blend that she's willing to hire a nanny from another country like the Phillipines, Moldova, or Bulgaria. (Spoiler alert: She actually hires an Azerbaijani nanny.) She's so international that she spends chapters giving biographies about women authors from "around the world" (i.e. the almost exclusively British and American authors). It's exhausting. And not nearly as comprehensive as she wants to think it is.
Disingenuity
Her book is filled with a metaphor where literal six-inch women represent the different aspects of her personality. When I say literal, I mean literal. At one point she encounters a "Thumbelina" on a plane and asks how the woman will make it through customs once they reach the US.
In a novel, that kind of metaphor where the author perceives the little people influencing their decisions would be fine. It would be within the world of the novel, after all. But when a book's a memoir, getting quite that literal is downright obnoxious. I was half waiting for a big reveal halfway through the book where she tries to show her Thumbelinas to someone and they make her go see a psychiatrist or something.
Conclusions
I had some other issues with this book that I don't feel the need to get into (possibly because they're petty), but I think one of the ultimate issues I had with this book is that I didn't read any of Shafak's novels. If I had, maybe I would have viewed all her descriptions about how cool and edgy she was for wanting to make popcorn an official breakfast food as something other than obnoxious. Maybe I would have thought, lovingly, "Oh, that Elif Shafak, at her shenanigans again." I don't know. A lot of people seem to love this book, so...?