Hijacking Motherhood and Making It Real: A Conversation with Jacinda Townsend

From LITERARY MAMA

LP: Also, there’s the ideal that we’re supposed to be mothers.

JT: Yes! So, I’ve always felt like when I’m working with other writers in the classroom, or otherwise, that there are so many younger women who haven’t even had kids yet, looking at us, and wondering: is this possible? Can you be a writer and a mom? I felt like it always behooved me to show them that, yes, in fact, you can integrate it.

Motherhood is a thing like no other, in that it becomes your tribe. I’ve had all these identities in life: girl, and then woman, Black person, whatever, but there is no tribe like that mother tribe. As writers, there’s this push-pull where people will tell you that you don’t want to be ghettoized as a woman who only writes about motherhood. And I’m like, well, what else am I supposed to be writing about? Because that’s the thing that’s most important to me, and that’s the thing that, for me, is full of all kinds of intense drama.

Read more at this link: A Conversation with Jacinda Townsend