Knocked Up, Knocked Down: Postcards of Miscarriage and Misadventure from the Brink of Parenthood

By Monica Murphy Lemoine
Catalyst Book Press

This book is not just for those that have experienced a miscarriage. Let’s make that clear. Yes, Knocked Up, Knocked Down: Postcards of Miscarriage and Other Misadventures from the Brink of Parenthood is all about the journey of healing from the great loss of being pregnant, physically caring for this baby within, then suddenly having parenthood ripped from beneath you. It’s a horrendous experience. However, what this book does best is open up that harsh reality to everyone who has never experienced it. Too often those that suffer through miscarriage or stillbirth feel outcast. While people generally know how to react to the death of a family member or friend, the death of an unborn child is confusing territory. The worst: some people just don’t understand how terribly painful that loss is. Reading this book will change that.

Knocked Up, Knocked Down is a very personal account of Monica Murphy Lemoine’s experience of entering motherhood, but ending up without a baby. How do you heal from such a confusing and heartbreaking experience? While it’s different for everyone, Monica found that most of the grieving literature in regards to miscarriages and stillbirths wasn’t at all helpful. If anything, she found it to be patronizing and irritating. While she tried many of the suggestions, her journey of finding out for herself what helps and what just makes it worse is helpful for anyone in a similar circumstance or anyone wanting to understand those that are.

As far as the writing itself, with a jarring, crass beginning, and slow character development, it takes at least thirty pages before you even begin to feel like you’re truly getting to know the author. Even though she shares plenty of personal information right from the beginning, there’s not much of an introduction. The story begins forty-eight hours after her miscarriage, jumping right into the focus of this journey, but you feel like you’re playing catch up trying to get to know her.

Once you get about fifty pages into this 200 page book, it all starts to come together. All of the introductions are finally explained with sufficient back-story to feel like you personally know Monica and her husband Kevin. Once that’s in place, it’s easier to understand, relate, and feel great compassion for this couple as they try to heal from their loss. Is Knocked Up, Knocked Down a bit depressing? You bet. But will it give you new perspective? Absolutely! This book is completely worth the read.

You would think with miscarriages and stillbirth being as common as it is (as Monica points out, the International Stillbirth Alliance states that 4.5 million stillbirths occur worldwide each year), that this topic would be addressed more often. But the truth is, it’s not. Good for Monica helping others feel less alone and providing everyone else with the means to begin to comprehend. Plus, readers can continue to follow Monica through her blog Knocked Up, Knocked Down. After reading her book, you are sure to wonder “What happens next?” and fortunately with her blog the journey continues.

Monica manages to bring you inside her world and allows you to share in her experiences, both the good and the bad, without making you feel like a voyeur. She opens up in a way that feels like family, a really close-knit and brutally honest family. No doubt you’ll walk away from reading her story a little wiser and much more empathetic.

Review by Sarah Eve Nichols-Fulghum

Entre Nos

Directed by Gloria La Morte and Paola Mendoza
IndiePix Studios



Mariana and her children, Gabriel and Andrea, are stranded in New York City. Two weeks after her husband Antonio asked them to leave their native Colombia and join him in Queens after a lengthy separation, he left $50 in an envelope, headed for Miami, and stopped answering his phone. A family friend tells Mariana that he isn’t coming home.

Undocumented and completely broke, Mariana tries to sell homemade empanadas on the streets while also accepting random jobs as they come. On one occasion, she’s forced to leave the kids home alone while she goes out for a few hours to take day work as a dishwasher. Kids being kids, they lay around teaching each other curse words in English until a friend comes by with a better offer, and they all sneak out to take an illicit dip in an elderly neighbor’s pool. Racing home after they’re discovered and chased away by an angry old man, they’re only seconds ahead of their mother on the subway platform, who witnesses them out alone in public. Clearly terrified for her children’s safety and of the U.S. authorities, she barges into their tiny apartment moments after her children, shouting at Gabi that in this country, they take children away from their parents.

Though their circumstances are often dire, the bond depicted between Mariana, Andrea, and Gabriel is remarkable. Overcoming a seemingly endless stream of difficulties along the way, Gabi pitches in to help the family survive, collecting cans when Mariana is too sick or exhausted to do it herself. And while the ways in which Mariana sacrifices for her children are clear, there are also lovely examples like when she pays for the kids to see a movie together. The $21 entrance fee for three is a bit steep, but she can shell out enough for the two of them and makes them swear to meet her out front the moment the film is over. They shriek in agreement as they race into the air-conditioned building as she calls after them, "Te quiero!"

Co-director Paola Mendoza is largely responsible for honoring the depictions of the struggling immigrant mother and her young children; the story is based on her own family’s struggle, a tribute to her mother. Entre Nos is very visually pleasing, expertly edited and strikingly beautiful despite the pain it depicts. Scenes of quintessential American poverty loom throughout, like neighbor women sharing at-home abortion tips on the sly or when the small family stands timidly outside the emergency room after Gabi hurt his leg until Mariana offers to “wash it at home” before they retreat back into the night. Whether they’re afraid of being deported or because they simply can’t afford the medical bills, the scene is an important reminder of how poverty and immigration are often deeply intertwined.

The film weaves themes of homelessness and the camaraderie of the streets with universal depictions of the strength and resilience of single mothers and their innocent, precocious children. It also reminds you that even if life as an undocumented immigrant seems unbearable, even if you want to go home, you may not be able to afford to turn around.

Review by Brittany Shoot

Motherhood and Feminism

By Amber E. Kinser
Seal Press

I doubt any role is more judged than mother. Add sexuality, class, and race into the equation and, for some of us, we will never be a "good" mother. But what are we really comparing ourselves to?

We are trying to live up to a myth. A myth of Biblical proportions that has been around for less than sixty years. Stephanie Koontz’s The Way We Never Were does an excellent job at debunking the myth of a Leave It to Beaver family and letting Donna Reed be our benchmark. Amber E. Kinser picks up that conversation and runs with it.

In Motherhood and Feminism Kinser outlines the evolution, both natural and government imposed, of the role of motherhood in American society. At the same time she is tracking the evolution of the feminist movement in the United States. Sometimes both areas collide; other times they complement each other. And that is what is fascinating about this book: how easily motherhood and the role of women in families can be shifted by outside economic pressures and government propaganda, as well as how the feminist movement often takes its cues from how motherhood is framed.

During the first wave of feminism, it was obvious that many of the women who were engaged in the fight for suffrage took a look at themselves and said, “Hey, women need the vote so we can be better citizens for our children and because women are just better people than men.” The theory that infusing women into politics would clean it up remains with us today. The fact that women could not ask for their own rights for their own sake, but rather used their children as the reason why they shouldn’t be left penniless after her husband dies, also remains with us. Consider how many mothers' organizations fight for rights on behalf of children rather than for women themselves.

In many ways the fight for women’s rights has and continues to be fought in the home. The so-called Mommy Wars are a proxy for where a woman should be in society and not about the well-being of children. It is also a proxy for who is worthy of support. (How dare that woman take government money to stay home with her children when my husband works hard and I budget so I can be home?) The backlash against mom bloggers earning money, directly or indirectly through free samples, is yet another battle over where a woman’s priorities should be: her career or her children.

Kinser makes the point over and over again that not all mothers movements are feminist, nor do they want to be. It is honestly easier to get a thousand women to rally for children’s health care than to rally for their own health care that includes access to full reproductive health services. And that’s where the gruff lives.

I've talked with feminists who wished that mothers organizations would just claim the damn label, but I get it. And yes, it usually falls to the abortion question. Kinser has one of the best rationales on why feminism must include a pro-choice stance—no ifs, ands, or buts. She also does a good job at tackling moms of color, queer moms, and low-income moms. This is not a history of white middle class feminist motherhood, although she correctly states that much of mainstream feminism and motherhood expectations are modeled on white middle class norms, and then she rips it apart.

Motherhood and Feminism is well written and documents a shared history that many moms and feminists often forget or aren't even aware of. Without moms, we wouldn't have won the right to vote. Without feminism, moms wouldn't have the rights they have today. We're like peanut butter and chocolate—and some us are peanut butter cups.

Review by Veronica I. Arreola

Cross-posted from Viva La Feminista

Kill Your Darlings: Issue One

Kill Your Darlings has a lot to live up to. In its inaugural issue its editor, Affirm Press’ Rebecca Starford, says the journal’s mission is to "reinvigorate and re-energise" Australia’s literary scene. She quotes editor Rob Spillman as saying that most journals are "good for you, but they taste awful." Kill Your Darlings intends to redress this—to shake up the medium and "publish literature that bites back." A big, bold statement.

First let me say that I love the title of this attractive new journal. It is an apt reference to the advice that writers are so often given. The bit you love the most is the bit that has to go. Editing your own work is a ruthless business, and cutting your ‘baby’ up can feel like murder. So, Kill Your Darlings is a perfect choice of title that is edgy and attention grabbing, and therefore sure to help with marketing. Moreover, the cover design is striking, the layout clean and readable, and the standard of editing (so often lacking these days) is high. In short, it’s a pleasure to curl up on the couch with.

The journal opens with Gideon Haigh’s biting (yes, they’ve succeeded there) assessment of the current state of reviewing. I suspect some may view this essay as deliberately provocative, but he makes some valid points about what he describes as the generally "lacklustre" fare on offer characterised by "its sheer dullness and inexpertise." He attributes much of the problem to timid reviewers who fear future retribution when their own work comes up for review, but also to newspapers and magazines who pay poorly (if at all) for reviews and begrudge the space they occupy. The critique has already sparked debate, which can only be a good thing.

On finishing reading this essay I, of course, turned straight to the review section at the back to see how Kill Your Darlings' measured up. There are two brief reviews, which surely for their length alone would paradoxically be lambasted under Haigh’s criteria (he quotes George Orwell’s opinion that 1000 words should be the "bare minimum" for any worthwhile review). Nevertheless, snappy reviews do serve a purpose and it’s good to see them included here alongside two much longer reviews. Starford’s consideration of Mary Gaitskill’s Don’t Cry certainly falls within Orwell’s ballpark, and makes a serious attempt to examine this latest offering within the broader context of her body of work. And there’s a lengthy review of The Wire, which Anthony Morris claims is "the best television drama series ever made." (I’m not convinced.)

But back to the ‘commentary’ section. I found Tracy Crisp’s reflective story about the elusive nature of inspiration and the difficulty in trying to write and mother simultaneously compelling. How to be the kind of writer she wants to be and the kind of mother is a conundrum to which I can relate. Then there’s Clementine Ford’s wryly amusing article on internet dating, and Paul Mitchell’s moving and funny account of guiltily bonding with his tweenage daughter over shopping despite his anti-consumerist principles.

It’s great to see an article by former Canberran Justin Heazlewood (aka The Bedroom Philosopher) featured. His commentary on the death of the album and his dad-like resistance to it makes for entertaining reading. The desire for musos to hold their own album in their hands (and not just on their iPod) is surely one to which many authors can relate (the desire for a beautiful object not just a file on an eReader). Ultimately, though, resistance will surely prove futile.

The only disappointment was Georgia Gowing’s commentary on the derby phenomenon. As a regular roller derby-goer I wanted more. For me, it didn’t entirely capture the electric energy and drama of a derby match and, other than a few interesting soundbites from the girls themselves, it failed to offer any fresh insights. Perhaps delving into links to punk culture and third wave feminism might have afforded it greater depth.

The fiction section includes seven short stories of which Patrick Cullen’s is the standout. "Carver’s Unkempt Lawn" imagines a meeting between four famous American writers in the home of Tess Gallagher and Raymond Carver, who is dying. The subtle elegance of this beautifully crafted story had me captivated. I also admired "Clinching" by Emmett Stinson, which throws us into the futile struggle of an emotionally disconnected couple—characters who leap boldly and vividly from the page. And then there’s Chris Womersley’s "Theories of Relativity," which opens with an arresting first line and just gets better from there. It is an unsettling tale of a dysfunctional family seen through the eyes of its youngest child who doesn’t discover the shocking inner world of his family until his twenty-first year. Womersley reveals the story in layers, masterfully leading us towards the final brutal punch. I haven’t read his first novel, The Low Road, which won the 2008 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, but I’ll certainly be seeking it out now.

I must confess that I was initially skeptical about whether Kill Your Darlings could live up to its own hype. Well, dear Reader, I was wrong to have doubted. Issue one is a damn fine read. I look forward to seeing what the next one brings.

Review by Irma Gold

Cross-posted from Overland

The Blue Orchard

By Jackson Taylor
Touchstone

I can't remember the last time a tale of fiction grabbed me and wouldn't let me go. I finished The Blue Orchard by Jackson Taylor over a week ago and it still haunts me during those quiet moments of my day. What drew me in to say 'yes' to reviewing this book was that it is a tale of a nurse in pre-Roe America who is arrested for performing illegal abortions. On top of that, The Blue Orchard is a fictionalized tale of Taylor's own grandmother.

But I have to tell you that I forgot that last fact while reading. I was so consumed by the ups and far too many downs of Verna Krone that I simply forgot she really did walk this earth. The Blue Orchard is a painful tale of a young girl's hope to find her place in the world, only to have too many decisions made for her that ultimately result in heartbreak. The story is far too delicate than I could ever express.

I will certainly be suggesting The Blue Orchard the next time my book group needs to pick a title. Not only is the issue of abortion discussed, but also gender roles, race, class, motherhood, and even a great dose of local politics. Oh, did I love the local politics angle!

Review by Veronica I. Arreola

Cross-posted from Viva La Feminista