By Lindsey Grudnicki
If you’ve finished reading our “Mothers” issue and are hungry for more motherhood-focused pieces, we’ve found the perfect journal for you! Literary Mama, a free online literary magazine headed by Caroline M. Grant, is “reading for the maternally inclined” and offers a variety of poetry and prose from women of all ages.
The most striking aspect of Literary Mama is the frankness that characterizes each work on the site. Part of the editors’ mission is to share pieces that are “too long, too complex, too ambiguous, too deep, too raw, too irreverent, too ironic, and too body conscious” for other publications, and the realization of this mission produces a notable sense of openness. The honesty and naturalness present in each selection unifies the journal as a whole. There is no shying away from the difficult, messy facts of life; the physical realities of motherhood, realities that alternatively inspire and interfere with a woman writer’s creative output, are bluntly faced and bravely explored.
In the past, I’ve reviewed a single issue of a journal for you here, giving you some idea of the type of writing you’ll discover and highlighting some of the publication’s strengths. Literary Mama is not a conventional journal due to its rolling online publication. For our purposes, Literary Mama’s latest “issue” includes posts from mid-October through early November. There are new posts every week, so if the journal becomes a favorite of yours, you’ll constantly have new material to browse through.
This issue of Literary Mama offers a number of columns, including a reader’s response about the importance of a mother’s voice and the power that communication possesses over families. After the reader’s piece, the column’s editor shares her comments on how the work was fine-tuned through collaborative revision, giving an inside-look at the exchange that takes place in preparing a piece for publication. “Simple,” another noteworthy column among this month’s posts, documents one woman’s experience as she helps her children build their own foundation of faith and discover their unique identity as individuals.
“Womb With a View” by Annie Choi and “Love and Punishment at the Clerk of the County Courts Office” by Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés stand out among the nonfiction and fiction selections, respectively. Choi’s humorous take on the frustrating and fruitful conversations that families have is an engaging read; its lighthearted spirit is matched by profound insights into some long-held expectations that certain cultures hold for women (and their wombs). In “Love and Punishment,” Milanés uses a waiting room setting to offer thoughts on love, marriage, and growing old.
Among the poems featured in Literary Mama this month, you’ll find two wonderful pieces from Minerva Rising’s newly-appointed Poetry Editor Emily Shearer. In “Picasso” and “Wood and Clay,” Shearer paints two vivid portraits of the parent-child relationship, touching upon both the delicate joy and the haunting feeling of potential heartache that motherhood naturally injects into existence.
Other sections of the journal offer recommended reading from editors and contributors, a profile of Kate Hopper (author of Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers), and a review of Hopper’s latest book, Ready for Air.
You don’t have to be a mother to engage with Literary Mama; any woman will find inspiration and encouragement within its “pages.” Balancing the writing life with familial obligations is a tricky business for all of us. The unending juggling act can be exhausting at times, exhilarating at others. Literary Mama serves as a place to reflect, vent, share, and celebrate the lessons we learn in our personal circuses each day.
You can read Literary Mama here: http://www.literarymama.com/.
