Readings & Reflections

On motherhood, literature and the stories we inherit.

I've always been interested in the stories we tell about motherhood. The ones we grow up hearing, the ones we encounter in books and popular culture, and the ones we find ourselves measuring our own experiences against.

As a writer and doctoral researcher, I spend a great deal of time thinking about how motherhood has been represented in literature, and how those representations continue to shape what we believe a mother should be.

I'm particularly interested in the contradictions: the expectation of selflessness alongside the desire for an identity of our own; the idealisation of maternal love alongside the realities of anger, ambivalence, exhaustion, and longing.

And I'm interested in what happens when women begin telling their own stories, rather than accepting the ones that have already been written for them.