A review by nathansnook
Motherhood by Sheila Heti
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
How should a person be? Really?
Heti has this way of asking all the questions that have always plagued my little heart, some of which I never knew how to form into questions or even know how to ask. But here, she forms them in ways that have brought so much care for me.
I think Heti writes for lonely people. Because her characters are usually the loneliest people in the world. So, could you blame a woman for wanting to dictate her life with a flip of a coin? Let heads or tails speak for her? Speak to her?
As both men and women in our narrator's life bombard her with the pressures of becoming a mother, you start to realize how much mothering exists outside of being a mother. Mothering is so inherent in life. In the way that we care, in the way that we move through the world. Femininity is laced so finely within our humanity, and how a patriarchal or anti-feminist society denies this is truly shocking to me. Look at a tree. Look at a fawn. Look at a running river or the calmness of a lake. Look at how yeast rises. How can you not see the mother in everything?
A book I will return to in the near future. Next time, with a highlighter in hand.
Heti has this way of asking all the questions that have always plagued my little heart, some of which I never knew how to form into questions or even know how to ask. But here, she forms them in ways that have brought so much care for me.
I think Heti writes for lonely people. Because her characters are usually the loneliest people in the world. So, could you blame a woman for wanting to dictate her life with a flip of a coin? Let heads or tails speak for her? Speak to her?
As both men and women in our narrator's life bombard her with the pressures of becoming a mother, you start to realize how much mothering exists outside of being a mother. Mothering is so inherent in life. In the way that we care, in the way that we move through the world. Femininity is laced so finely within our humanity, and how a patriarchal or anti-feminist society denies this is truly shocking to me. Look at a tree. Look at a fawn. Look at a running river or the calmness of a lake. Look at how yeast rises. How can you not see the mother in everything?
A book I will return to in the near future. Next time, with a highlighter in hand.