A Bookseller Editor’s Choice for March 2020
Motherhood is life-changing. Disorientating, overwhelming, intense on every level, it can leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about yourself. Yet despite more women speaking out in recent years about the reality of their experiences – good, bad and in between – all too often it’s the same stories getting told, while key parts of the maternal experience still remain unspeakable and unseen. There are a million different ways to be a mother, yet the vision we see in books, on screen and online overwhelmingly fails to represent this commonplace yet extraordinary experience for most of us. It’s time to broaden the conversation.
The Best, Most Awful Job is a deeply personal collection about motherhood in all its raw, heart-wrenching, gloriously impossible forms. Overturning assumptions, breaking down myths, shattering stereotypes, it will challenge perceptions of what it means to be a mother.
Pulsating with energy and emotion, The Best, Most Awful Job brings together a diverse range of bold and brilliant writers and asks you to listen.
Edited by:
Katherine May
Imprint: Elliott & Thompson Limited
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 138mm,
ISBN: 9781783964864
ISBN 10: 1783964863
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 01 May 2020
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Out of Print
CONTENTS; Introduction vii; Katherine May; What Your Mother Didn't Tell You 1; Leah Hazard; On the Shock of a Surprise Pregnancy 7; Javaria Akbar; Maternal Rage 15; Saima Mir; High on Oxytocin and Tea 23; Jodi Bartle; By Instinct 29; Huma Qureshi; A Heartbeat 37; Peggy Riley; The Absence 49; Emily Morris; Learning to Be a Mother 63; Michelle Adams Can I Touch Myself, Though? 73; Hollie McNish; Brief Exchanges 83; Susana Moreira Marques, translated by Julia Sanches; On Stigma and Stoicism 97; Dani McClain; On Working Out What It All Means 105; Josie George; Boys Will Be Whatever 113; Michelle Tea; The Psychic 121; Charlene Allcott; An Honour I Probably Don't Deserve 129; Jenny Parrott; The Dishes 137; Sharmila Chauhan; Sometimes the Other Way Around 147; Joanne Limburg; Misfit 157; MiMi Aye; Maternal Landscapes 165; Carolina Alvarado Molk; Living with Children 173; Tiphanie Yanique; Acknowledgements 181; Contributor Biographies 183
Katherine May is an author of fiction and memoir whose titles include the acclaimed memoirs Wintering (2020) and The Electricity of Every Living Thing (2018), The Whitstable High Tide Swimming Club, The 52 Seductions, Burning Out, and Ghosts & Their Uses. Her journalism and essays have appeared in a range of publications including The Times, Good Housekeeping, Aeon and Cosmopolitan. She lives in Whitstable, Kent, with her husband and son.
Reviews for The Best, Most Awful Job: Twenty Writers Talk Honestly About Motherhood
'All the pain, power and privilege of being a mother is here in these tales of stepparenting; being unable to conceive; having six children; single parenthood; and of how race, class, disability, religion and sexuality affect our perceptions of motherhood' - Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller Editor's Choice
