Reviewed by Susan Blumberg-Kason I first became familiar with Jennifer Lang’s writing just after she published her first book, Places We Left Behind. It included all the ingredients I enjoy in a memoir: a cross-cultural story, an unusual structure, and settings far from home. In Lang’s case, she is known for writing very short chapters that still manage to pack in as much content as found in more traditionally structured memoirs. Lang met and married a French Israeli man decades ago and wrote about the many ways in which she navigated her international marriage, including where they chose to…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Lara Lillibridge Mothers and Other Fictional Characters by Nicole Graev Lipson is smart, sexy, highly relatable book. Lipson’s prose delves into what it means to be a woman, mother, and daughter and had me exclaiming, “Yes! Exactly!” audibly as I read. It’s the kind of intelligent read that sparks conversations—the perfect buddy read or book club pick. Lipson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, selected for The Best American Essays anthology, and shortlisted for a National Magazine Award. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, River Teeth, Alaska Quarterly Review, LA Review…
Review by Emily Webber Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation, Sarah Yahm’s debut novel, follows the unforgettable Rosenberg family—consisting of Leon, Louise, and their daughter Lydia —over forty years as they navigate life, especially in the face of a terminal diagnosis. Despite the heavy subject matter, this novel remains irreverent, quirky, and funny. As Louise learns she has a genetic illness that affects Ashkenazi Jews, she agonizes over the impact on her daughter, both her ability to be a parent as her body becomes more disabled, and wanting to spare her daughter from becoming her caretaker or witnessing her decline.…
Submissions Are Open Until 7/15 MER will be open until July 15, 2025 for literary and art submissions to our annual print issue on the theme of Mother and Family. All submissions are through Submittable. We publish poetry (up to 3 poems, no more than 5 pages), and fiction, creative prose/nonfiction, and hybrid works (up to 1000 words) on mothering or motherhood. We also seek mother-themed art. You need not be a mother to submit. Our calendar conforms to Eastern Time. The theme of this issue will be “Mother and Family.” What We’re Looking For: Work that focuses on a mother’s interactions with other…
Tamar Jacobs GOOD WHOLESOME AMERICAN THING I sat away from the street on a curb mostly hidden behind a bush to allow them the illusion of independence and I heard people tell them, my sons, 7 and 9, so many things. People asked what they planned to do with the money they made and some tested their math as they asked for change, and some asked if they’d done their homework and one told one of them he could take off his mask because it was safe, we’re outside, and one asked my other son if he had…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg Unassuming women of fierce literary imaginations can find themselves historically reduced to spinsterhood or a perceived existence of wistful eccentricity, myths that contribute to a legacy of emotional isolation that diminishes their artistic prowess. In Two Emilys Andrea Potos summons the presence (and personal influence) of two iconic writers, who serve as literary spirit-guides—Emily Dickinson and Emily Bronte—inspired by and integrating their creative energies into her everyday life, from youth to seasoned poet. Both poets, who avoided fame during their lives and were renegades in their own right, float through these pages with an air…
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Pramila Venkateswaran, Exile is not a Foreign Word, Copper Coin, November 2024, poetry Exile is not a Foreign Word addresses the kinds of barriers we experience in our lives that affect us for generations. Venkateswaran documents the different political borders she has experienced, from seeing the effects of Partition on India and Pakistan, to the exile of women within families and within one’s own country. The consequences of wall-building to divide gender, caste, race, and class are violent in their enforcement, and traumatize us for generations. These poems also explore the resilience of human…
An Interview with Domenica Ruta, Author of the Novel All the Mothers by Nicole Haroutunian About a chosen family of mothers who have children—initially unbeknownst to them—with the same man, All the Mothers by Domenica Ruta is by turns devastating, hilarious, and paradigm-shifting. Structurally ambitious and narratively propulsive, the novel follows women making bold, courageous choices, forging their own paths, and showing up for one another. In this excerpt, Sandy struggles to feed her curious baby, Rosie, as she waits to meet “the other mother,” Steph, and her child Ash, for the first time. According to the latest…
Review by Jane Ward “It’s pitch black and Alice won’t stop screaming.” (4) Two pages into The Fun Times Brigade, author Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s follow-up to her acclaimed novel Letters to Amelia, and I am fully transported to my own early days of mothering an inconsolable, colicky newborn. The sleeplessness, the isolation, the need for a break and the equal but ironically opposite unwillingness to be out of reach of the child. The blur that is one day to the next. My experience is well in the past. The novel’s main character, new mother Amy, is in the throes of…
Review by Carla Panciera In the latter pages of award-winning author Laurette Folk’s newest novel Eleison, a young priest struggling with his vows declares, “‘I often think of what Augustine said, how the disorder of the soul is its own punishment.’” (99) In these pages, Folk examines her characters according to, if not their disorders, then certainly the thoughts and behaviors that haunt them. What ensues is an exploration of what it means to be a flawed (and thus very human) being who seeks the kind of mercy one might expect to find in a book so titled. Folk’s…