Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 A Living Archive : Mothering as the Ultimate Synthesis
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'At the beginning of 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write (2014), author, mother, and playwright Sarah Ruhl notes: ‘At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.’ Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell’s Mothertongues embraces, embodies even, this collapse of the boundaries between living and writing. Rather than extolling the proverbial ‘room of her own’, Bell and Dovey are asking us to heed the kinds of knowledge that come from being embedded in the everyday. A hybrid, genre-defying book about contemporary motherhood, Mothertongues is woven from fragments based on the authors’ own lives, from texts both historical and literary, from imagined conversations and family histories, from the act of friendship itself. It is intimate, moving from levity to depth, the corporeal to the cerebral, in the space of a page, a paragraph, a breath. It is a collection of ephemera – a stray thought, the contents of a handbag, breastfeeding diary excerpts, book lists, text message exchanges – that, taken together, form a living archive of twenty-first-century motherhood.'  (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Book Review no. 443 June 2022 24657601 2022 periodical issue

    'That there will no second term for the Morrison government will mean for many a winter of milder discontent. The subject of changing course looms large over our June issue, from John Harwood’s reconsideration of his mother Gwen Harwood’s legacy (making possible a new biography of the poet, also reviewed in this issue) to Linda Atkins’ refocusing of attention to wider social problems in the abortion debate. Elizabeth Tynan gives a timely reminder of the historic costs of colonial servility, while Ilana Snyder looks at the unrealised potential of the Gonski education reforms. In fiction, we review new titles by Douglas Stuart, Steve Toltz, Felicity McLean, and Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell, while in poetry, we look at the latest by Sarah Holland-Batt, Emily Stewart, and Claire Potter. The inimitable Frances Wilson is our Critic of the Month. From convicts to caca (ahem), there’s plenty in store for the polymorphously curious!'  (Publication summary)

    2022
    pg. 30
Last amended 7 Jun 2022 08:49:10
30 https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2022/june-2022-no-443/978-june-2022-no-443/9187-sarah-gory-reviews-mothertongues-by-ceridwen-dovey-and-eliza-bell A Living Archive : Mothering as the Ultimate Synthesissmall AustLit logo Australian Book Review
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