Celebrating Motherhood as a Choice-- Katha Pollitt

Connie Schultz of the Washington Post reviews Katha Pollitt's new book on abortion: Pro. Pollitt visits the Institute on Jan. 29th.

Schultz writes:  Katha Pollitt may not appreciate my starting this review with her description of her own experience of motherhood, but this is my attempt to broaden her audience beyond the predictable cast for her small, powerful book. “People think of pregnant women as weak and vulnerable, but when I was pregnant with my daughter I felt as if I could put my hand in fire and it would only glow,” she writes in “Pro.” “I never felt alone: There were two of us, right there. I didn’t think of my child as an embryo or fetus. . . . I thought of her first as a funny little sea creature of indeterminate sex, and later, yes, as a baby, even though she was only a baby in my thoughts.”

To state what should be obvious, Pollitt, like most other women who support abortion rights, celebrates motherhood as a choice. The poet and columnist for the Nation is also one of the most eloquent champions for women’s reproductive freedom, and her latest book is a manifesto.

More in the Washington Post:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-pro-reclaiming-abortion-rights-by-katha-pollitt/2014/11/21/ba6498f0-52fb-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html

More about Pollitt's upcoming visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/pollitt_katha15.html

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Jamaica Kincaid, Writing as "Self Rescuing"

Jamaica Kincaid, major Caribbean-American author, who speaks tomorrow, Tuesday, 7/24, in Saratoga, recalls the childhood neglect that propelled her to become a writer.

Growing up as an only child until the age of 9, her mother and stepfather gave birth to three sons in quick succession....

"I don't know if having other children was the cause for our relationship changing - it might have changed as I entered adolescence, but her attention went elsewhere. And also our family money remained the same but there were more people to feed and to clothe and so everything got sort of shortened not only material things but emotional things, the good emotional things I got a short end of that. But then I got more of things I didn't have, like a certain kind of cruelty and neglect. In the end it didn't matter. When I was first a young person it did matter a lot because I didn't know what had happened to me.. If I hadn't become a writer I don't know what would have happened to me; that was a kind of self rescuing."
Jamaica Kincaid will share the stage with novelist Henri Cole, tomorrow, Tuesday, July 24th, 8PM, Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga. Free.

Click here for more events in the series. All are free and open to the general public.

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On Refusing to Read Joan Didion's "Blue Nights"

As the mother of daughters, Metroland columnist Jo Page, who shares the stage with Margot Livesey on 3/20, meditates on her own refusal to read Joan Didion's excruciatingly painful book, Blue Nights (2011), about the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne.

".... I will not be reading Blue Nights for more reasons than the obvious one: that the subject matter is brutally sad. It’s more complicated than that and more personal. I’m a mother watching the slow ascent into adulthood of my two daughters and I find it a difficult and sometimes heart-wrenching job."

"In parenting—or at least in mothering—there are always two constants: fear for your child’s welfare and doubt about whether or not you are doing a good job in loving them and raising them. These twinned constants—fear and doubt—are absolute states. Why I ever thought this would lessen as they grew up I have no idea." More.

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