The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem

The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem PDF Author: Julie Phillips
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393635155
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book

Book Description
An insightful, provocative, and witty exploration of the relationship between motherhood and art—for anyone who is a mother, wants to be, or has ever had one. What does a great artist who is also a mother look like? What does it mean to create, not in “a room of one’s own,” but in a domestic space? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge. With fierce empathy, Phillips evokes the intimate and varied struggles of brilliant artists and writers of the twentieth century. Ursula K. Le Guin found productive stability in family life, and Audre Lorde’s queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms. Susan Sontag became a mother at nineteen, Angela Carter at forty-three. These mothers had one child, or five, or seven. They worked in a studio, in the kitchen, in the car, on the bed, at a desk, with a baby carrier beside them. They faced judgement for pursuing their creative work—Doris Lessing was said to have abandoned her children, and Alice Neel’s in-laws falsely claimed that she once, to finish a painting, left her baby on the fire escape of her New York apartment. As she threads together vivid portraits of these pathbreaking women, Phillips argues that creative motherhood is a question of keeping the baby on that apocryphal fire escape: work and care held in a constantly renegotiated, provisional, productive tension. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, The Baby on the Fire Escape illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary life.

The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem

The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem PDF Author: Julie Phillips
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393635155
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book

Book Description
An insightful, provocative, and witty exploration of the relationship between motherhood and art—for anyone who is a mother, wants to be, or has ever had one. What does a great artist who is also a mother look like? What does it mean to create, not in “a room of one’s own,” but in a domestic space? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge. With fierce empathy, Phillips evokes the intimate and varied struggles of brilliant artists and writers of the twentieth century. Ursula K. Le Guin found productive stability in family life, and Audre Lorde’s queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms. Susan Sontag became a mother at nineteen, Angela Carter at forty-three. These mothers had one child, or five, or seven. They worked in a studio, in the kitchen, in the car, on the bed, at a desk, with a baby carrier beside them. They faced judgement for pursuing their creative work—Doris Lessing was said to have abandoned her children, and Alice Neel’s in-laws falsely claimed that she once, to finish a painting, left her baby on the fire escape of her New York apartment. As she threads together vivid portraits of these pathbreaking women, Phillips argues that creative motherhood is a question of keeping the baby on that apocryphal fire escape: work and care held in a constantly renegotiated, provisional, productive tension. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, The Baby on the Fire Escape illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary life.

Mother Reader

Mother Reader PDF Author: Moyra Davey
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609801024
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book

Book Description
The intersection of motherhood and creative life is explored in these writings on mothering that turn the spotlight from the child to the mother herself. Here, in memoirs, testimonials, diaries, essays, and fiction, mothers describe first-hand the changes brought to their lives by pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering. Many of the writers articulate difficult and socially unsanctioned maternal anger and ambivalence. In Mother Reader, motherhood is scrutinized for all its painful and illuminating subtleties, and addressed with unconventional wisdom and candor. What emerges is a sense of a community of writers speaking to and about each other out of a common experience, and a compilation of extraordinary literature never before assembled in a single volume.

James Tiptree, Jr.

James Tiptree, Jr. PDF Author: Julie Phillips
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 146688911X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Get Book

Book Description
James Tiptree, Jr. burst onto the science fiction scene in the 1970s with a series of hard-edged, provocative short stories. Hailed as a brilliant masculine writer with a deep sympathy for his female characters, he penned such classics as Houston, Houston, Do You Read? and The Women Men Don't See. For years he corresponded with Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Ursula Le Guin. No one knew his true identity. Then the cover was blown on his alter ego: A sixty-one-year-old woman named Alice Sheldon. As a child, she explored Africa with her mother. Later, made into a debutante, she eloped with one of the guests at the party. She was an artist, a chicken farmer, a World War II intelligence officer, a CIA agent, an experimental psychologist. Devoted to her second husband, she struggled with her feelings for women. In 1987, her suicide shocked friends and fans. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award was created to honor science fiction or fantasy that explores our understanding of gender. This fascinating biography by Julie Phillips, ten years in the making, is based on extensive research, exclusive interviews, and full access to Alice Sheldon's papers.

Designing Motherhood

Designing Motherhood PDF Author: Michelle Millar Fisher
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262044897
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book

Book Description
More than eighty designs--iconic, archaic, quotidian, and taboo--that have defined the arc of human reproduction. While birth often brings great joy, making babies is a knotty enterprise. The designed objects that surround us when it comes to menstruation, birth control, conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood vary as oddly, messily, and dramatically as the stereotypes suggest. This smart, image-rich, fashion-forward, and design-driven book explores more than eighty designs--iconic, conceptual, archaic, titillating, emotionally charged, or just plain strange--that have defined the relationships between people and babies during the past century. Each object tells a story. In striking images and engaging text, Designing Motherhood unfolds the compelling design histories and real-world uses of the objects that shape our reproductive experiences. The authors investigate the baby carrier, from the Snugli to BabyBjörn, and the (re)discovery of the varied traditions of baby wearing; the tie-waist skirt, famously worn by a pregnant Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy, and essential for camouflaging and slowly normalizing a public pregnancy; the home pregnancy kit, and its threat to the authority of male gynecologists; and more. Memorable images--including historical ads, found photos, and drawings--illustrate the crucial role design and material culture plays throughout the arc of human reproduction. The book features a prologue by Erica Chidi and a foreword by Alexandra Lange. Contributors Luz Argueta-Vogel, Zara Arshad, Nefertiti Austin, Juliana Rowen Barton, Lindsey Beal, Thomas Beatie, Caitlin Beach, Maricela Becerra, Joan E. Biren, Megan Brandow-Faller, Khiara M. Bridges, Heather DeWolf Bowser, Sophie Cavoulacos, Meegan Daigler, Anna Dhody, Christine Dodson, Henrike Dreier, Adam Dubrowski, Michelle Millar Fisher, Claire Dion Fletcher, Tekara Gainey, Lucy Gallun, Angela Garbes, Judy S. Gelles, Shoshana Batya Greenwald, Robert D. Hicks, Porsche Holland, Andrea Homer-Macdonald, Alexis Hope, Malika Kashyap, Karen Kleiman, Natalie Lira, Devorah L Marrus, Jessica Martucci, Sascha Mayer, Betsy Joslyn Mitchell, Ginger Mitchell, Mark Mitchell, Aidan O’Connor, Lauren Downing Peters, Nicole Pihema, Alice Rawsthorn, Helen Barchilon Redman, Airyka Rockefeller, Julie Rodelli, Raphaela Rosella, Loretta J. Ross, Ofelia Pérez Ruiz, Hannah Ryan, Karin Satrom, Tae Smith, Orkan Telhan, Stephanie Tillman, Sandra Oyarzo Torres, Malika Verma, Erin Weisbart, Deb Willis, Carmen Winant, Brendan Winick, Flaura Koplin Winston

Summary of Julie Phillips's The Baby on the Fire Escape

Summary of Julie Phillips's The Baby on the Fire Escape PDF Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 41

Get Book

Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The maternal subject is a figure that disrupts or interrupts our notions of subjectivity. Motherhood is an undiscovered country in the literary sense, and we must venture into it lest our experience go unrecorded. #2 The division between mothering and creative work once seemed absolute. But in 1962, the careers of women with children were beginning to flourish. Mothers found ways to do their work, and were recognized for it. #3 The experience of being a mother is subjective, and it is difficult to explain or understand. It is everywhere in practice, but in theory, it seems nowhere. #4 The Freudian view of mothering is that it is the end of growth and achievement for a woman. The ideal situation is one in which the interests of mother and child are identical.

Refashioning and Redress

Refashioning and Redress PDF Author: Mary M. Brooks
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606065114
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book

Book Description
This volume explores the conservation and presentation of dress in museums and beyond as a complex, collaborative process. Recognizing this process as a dynamic interaction of investigation, interpretation, intervention, re-creation, and display, Refashioning and Redress: Conserving and Displaying Dress examines the ways in which these seemingly static exhibitions of “costume” or “fashion” are actively engaged in cultural production. The seventeen case studies included here reflect a broad range of practice and are presented by conservators, curators, makers, and researchers from around the world, exposing changing approaches and actions at different times and in different places. Ranging from the practical to the conceptual, these contributions demonstrate the material, social, and philosophical interactions inherent in the conservation and display of dress and draw upon diverse disciplines ranging from dress history to social history, material cultural studies to fashion studies, and conservation to museology. Case studies include fashion as spectacle in the museum, dress as political and personal memorialization, and theatrical dress, as well as dress from living indigenous cultures, dress in fragments, and dress online.

Things That Helped

Things That Helped PDF Author: Jessica Friedmann
Publisher: FSG Originals
ISBN: 0374274800
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book

Book Description
The author navigates her recovery from postpartum depression in essays that draw on critical theory, popular culture, and her own experiences, exploring such topics as class, race, gender, sexuality, motherhood, creativity, and mental illness.

The Spellman Files

The Spellman Files PDF Author: Lisa Lutz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847396208
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

Book Description
‘Fast-paced, irreverent, and very funny, The Spellman Files is like Harriet the Spy for grown-ups’ Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Eligible and American Wife Izzy Spellman is 28, single and works for Spellman Investigations, a family-run private detective agency. She might have a chequered past littered with romantic mistakes - but at least she's good at her job. Invading people's privacy comes naturally. To the whole family. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail and wire-tap a Spellman. But when Izzy's parents hire her 14-year-old sister to discover the identity of her new boyfriend, Izzy decides she wants out. Before they'll let her go, her parents ask her to solve one last case - a 15-year-old, ice-cold, missing person, impossible-to-solve case. But when a disappearance occurs far closer to home, Izzy's Impossible Case becomes the most important of her life. ‘Hilarious. My enjoyment of The Spellman Files was only slightly undercut by my irritation that I hadn't written it myself. The funniest book I've read in years!’ Lauren Weisberger, author of The Devil Wears Prada ‘The Spellman Files is hilarious, outrageous, and hip. Izzy Spellman, P.I., is a total original, with a voice so fresh and real, you want more, more, more. At long last, we know what Nancy Drew would have been like had she come from a family of lovable crackpots. Lisa Lutz has created a delicious comedy with skill and truth. I loved it’ Adriana Trigiani, author of Lucia, Lucia and Big Stone Gap

The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending PDF Author: Julian Barnes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307957330
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 158

Get Book

Book Description
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

Inappropriate Bodies Art, Design and Maternity

Inappropriate Bodies Art, Design and Maternity PDF Author: Buller Rachel Epp
Publisher: Demeter Press
ISBN: 1772582557
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
This edited collection examines conflicting assumptions, expectations, and perceptions of maternity in artistic, cultural, and institutional contexts. Over the past two decades, the maternal body has gained currency in popular culture and the contemporary art world, with many books and exhibitions foregrounding artists’ experiences and art historical explorations of maternity that previously were marginalized or dismissed. In too many instances, however, the maternal potential of female bodies—whether realized or not—still causes them to be stigmatized, censored, or otherwise treated as inappropriate: cultural expectations of maternity create one set of prejudices against women whose bodies or experiences do align with those same expectations, and another set of prejudices against those whose do not. Support for mothers in the paid workforce remains woefully inadequate, yet in many cultural contexts, social norms continue to ask what is “wrong” with women who do not have children. In these essays and conversations, artists and writers discuss how maternal expectations shape both creative work and designed environments, and highlight alternative ways of existing in relation to those expectations.