The Multiverse of Motherhood | Golden Motor Fund Announcement No. 56

The 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to French writer Annie Ernaux for her "courage and sensitivity in uncovering the roots, barriers and collective constraints of personal memory." Ernault's works are mostly autobiographical. In her works , "the relationship with her mother, feminism, and life as a working class" are recurring themes.

Ernaux uses sociology and anthropology to closely connect personal life history with public history. Ernaux's mother left school at the age of twelve, but she was a voracious reader, which also cultivated Ernaux's love for books. At the same time, she was not willing to be confined to her native class, starting as a butter factory worker. Went to the manager of a small coffee shop. Ernault described his mother as "an exception to the class" who "always washed her hands before opening a book." In "I Remain in Darkness," which she wrote about her mother's Alzheimer's disease, she described how her mother's past life was replayed in a body that was gradually losing its memory. "The pain in her life resurfaced." Emerging. In the hospital, she would suddenly interject, 'I have a hard life,' 'They never give me anything to eat.'" "Happening", which was adapted into a film of the same name and won the Golden Lion Award, uses the author's personal experience to tell the story of a French woman's physical and mental suffering due to abortion.

People always link the words womb, childbirth, and maternal love together. Is this a blessing or a shackles for mothers? Or can we see more possibilities in the rich forms of life? This issue of Jinma takes the word "mother" as its theme and selects several articles from personal and collective perspectives. On the one hand, the word mother has been given too many cultural and social connotations. The feminist movement has given people the weapons to deconstruct "motherhood" and break the myth of mothers as "natural caregivers"; on the other hand, In several narratives full of personal emotions, the daughters talked about the irreconcilable pain and harm caused to them by their mother. They talked about their mother’s coexistence as a “perpetrator” and a “victim” as part of their father’s power. , talking about the resentment that cannot be let go, and also looking for understanding and a way out. The relationship between mother and daughter can be a battlefield of bloody swords and shadows, or it can be a palace of the purest and selfless divine love; the mother is the daughter's sister who "shares kidneys and heart", and is also the destined curse of the daughter, ready to escape at any time. self. No matter what the relationship is, we can at least boldly say that women can never understand themselves beyond their mothers.

A home with only women: Mom’s name—— by @Lola

From the time I was born until I was more than ten years old, she always seemed happy to be called the name she gave her. And I rebelliously disliked my name. She told me that when I grow up, I can change my name or change my surname to hers. But when I entered high school, I was able to accept this name. The reaction when others called my name made me feel that it was not too bad, and I was even a little satisfied. In turn, I began to challenge my mother's authority and shared my aesthetics with her. I thought her original name was very nice, her words were beautiful, and she was very special.

A story about my mother's name. Behind the pull between the "wishful, romantic" name that the mother changed and the name on her ID card lies the scenery and story of her life. At the age of forty-five, at the suggestion of her daughter, she opened a shop of her own using her own name instead of her children's name.

After mothers cheat - by @Matters404

I started to tell my friends all this. I think cheating is a brave thing. It is precisely mothers who are bravely pursuing their own feelings. They have no choice. My friend’s mother once committed suicide, and my mother tried her best. Find a way to leave. The "concept of chastity" is deeply rooted in her past. Her friends have demanded payment from her mother for so many years on behalf of her father. Her family relationship is in a mess. She has been deeply involved in these years and has been under great mental pressure. The two of us walked out of this hell together.

During his childhood, the author was controlled and deprived by his mother, while his best friend's mother was gentle and kind. Until one day, they learned that each other's mothers had cheated on each other - the author and his best friend reconnected through their mutual disgust for their mothers. Later, the author began reading feminist books and began to reflect on how patriarchal structures also trapped mothers, and her feelings about mothers' infidelity changed.

If I can't fight for you, I choose to live for myself. —— by @LilyChen

Mother, my journey was never because of marriage, it was just because you shook me off and pushed me away when I was here. Just because when I get close to you, I will always be sad and sad for several days. In the face of scolding, attacks and provocations, you see, I act invincible, but my heart has been ravaged and broken time and time again. It hurts so much that I thought it was wrong to hug a hedgehog that always loves to prick me. Very normal thing. **Dear mother, the battle is over, let us all have a good rest!

In the mother's "love", the author is bruised and bruised. Even if she understands that her mother is both a "victim" and a "perpetrator", true reconciliation has not come as expected, but the author decided to give up fighting and turned to "love" - ​​even if her mother has not learned how to love others, love Own.

Crooked Brain｜Mimiana: As a woman, I am gradually drifting away from the concept of “mother” —— by @imiana

Are we still looking for the parts of mothers that cannot be deconstructed, such as "unconditional love"? When I am tired of constantly making transactions in this capitalist world, looking for the recognition of others and the value of being "useful to society" ; Or when I have to endure loneliness in order to pursue independence and freedom, I miss my mother and still project my imagination of the ultimate human connection to my mother, and I am willing to show all my vulnerabilities for this connection.

Feminism deconstructs the concept of motherhood - "maternal love" is no longer seen as pure selflessness, but as a discourse of patriarchal dominance and control over women. "Anti-marriage and anti-parenting" is called the passive resistance of many Chinese and foreign feminists. As a childless feminist, the author is still thinking about the "liberating" side of "motherhood" itself, and asks about the possibility of an unconditional connection like "mother and daughter." After she and her mother got to know each other better, she was "ready to talk to her about everything about becoming a mother."

François Beauvoir: the name of a person - by @Chin

Finally, when Simon was sorting out his mother's belongings, he saw a handwritten note: "If I had met a noble senior who told me about Nietzsche, Gide and freedom when I was twenty years old, I would have shared the same relationship with my father's The family is cut off." In fact, the mother's heart is very painful. She wants to understand and rationalize her daughter's thoughts. For a pious person, what she wants is that the souls of the whole family must be saved before they can be reunited in heaven. .

In "A Very Peaceful Death," Simone de Beauvoir records the six weeks before her mother Françoise Beauvoir's death in an accessible narrative. François would cry because Simon had given up his faith and would say to her, "I am afraid of you because you are very smart." Perhaps the most famous feminist in the world, her love-hate relationship with her mother is also a mess, and she can only tell her mother's story from her daughter's perspective. As the title of another article by @Chin said, **** we women are born as daughters, but not necessarily mothers . **

On Mother's Day, let's get closer to my mother's heart and understand her life of working outside. [What Migrant Moms Have to Say 01] —— by @中国女工. Record

In my childhood memories, my mother was very beautiful. At that time, she had long hair. Every morning when she got up, she would sit quietly by the door and comb her hair. She divided her hair into two sides and moved her fingers dexterously. The two braids came from her shoulders. It drooped down. When we got a little older, the burden of tuition and living expenses became heavier and heavier. In the 1990s, the taxes and fees in rural areas were even more overwhelming for farmers. The two aunts were the first group of young people to go out to work. They returned home during the Chinese New Year, wearing new clothes and bringing back some snacks and instant noodles that we had never seen before. They said that working outside can earn more than 300 yuan a month. Later, my mother went out to work. The long braids disappeared and became short hair.

The article tells the story of a mother who works outside the home. She cut off her long hair and went out to work, she cried in the factory at night, she worked hard all her life but had no pension, "it hurts when I think of her when I'm hungry, and it hurts even more when I think of her when I'm full."

"Cloud Conversation" gives me room to turn around, and I return "myself" to my mother: Kate Xie and Wu Xiaole chat in the cloud - by @Openbook Reading Magazine

My mother has four younger sisters, and she has five stories to publish based on the sentence "When I was a young lady...". In fact, every story sounds "unfettered" and confident. It’s hard for me to imagine that these aunts of mine also sang and hummed Western songs, went to disco after get off work, and had messy relationships with bad men. If you want to identify this "vacuum zone" in the carefree years of daughters and above, wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law, you have to borrow the most shocking sentence in the book: "I asked you once, if you could do it over again, would you still be willing to do it?" Be a mother?"

Taiwanese writer Wu Xiaole's "Your Children Are Not Your Children" and Hsieh Kate's "My Mom Was an Artistic Girl When She Was a Young Lady" also talk about intergenerational conflicts. This conversation between the two talks about "how children gaze at their mothers." And while returning "oneself" to the mother, how to let the mother and myself find their respective subjects.

Column｜Mothers who hate their children in reality, games and myths—— by @新色Magazine

But I don’t really like the repetitive narrative that mothers have good reasons to hate their children. It makes me feel very painful, as if there is no other answer. For a woman, the way she exits as a mother must be a tragedy. So I prefer to believe in games and myths. A mother can choose to put her child in a box because of her ugly nagging, or she can get furious and throw her child off Mount Olympus without hesitation.

To this day, a mother who does not love her children is still considered immoral and taboo. The article looks at mothers, both fictional and real, who hate their children. Motherly love is not natural.

Interview Review | 2013 Beijing Foreign Studies University's "The Vagina Monologues" drama: Secrets come from silence, power comes from words - by @supportthinkinginnocent/THINKTOOMUCH

The last scene of the original play "The Vagina Monologues" is a poem, which Ensler dedicated to his daughter-in-law. Looking at it now, it can also be given to all women: The heart is capable of sacrifice, and so is the vagina/The heart can forgive and repair, it can change shape to accommodate us, it can expand to let us out, and the vagina can do the same/The heart can do the same for us Pains, stretches for us, dies for us, it bleeds, and bleeds for us to enter this difficult, wonderful world that the vagina can too/I was in that room/I remember.

In 2003, Sun Yat-sen University put "The Vagina Monologues" on the Chinese stage for the first time. In 2018, the play was banned from being performed at Fudan University. The vagina is the site of personal pleasure and pain, as well as social and cultural ones. Vagina, uterus, mother, these words can be the result of patriarchal society’s essentialization of women, but they can also become sharp blades of resistance and reflection.

The Road to Korean Women’s Abortion Rights (Part 1) & The Road to Korean Women’s Abortion Rights (Part 2) - Feminist Action - by @PicaPica

The movement to decriminalize abortion in South Korea has been steadily growing in influence since the first large-scale action in 2016. In 2017, more than 235,000 people signed a petition calling for the abortion law to be repealed. A government poll conducted at the end of 2018 showed that 75% of women wanted abortion-related laws to be changed. The human rights of women and girls and the right to reproductive self-determination must be recognized and respected.

Women are not born to be mothers, and they have the right to decide whether they become mothers. Until April 11, 2019, South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled that the “abortion crime” clause in the criminal law was unconstitutional. For women speaking out for their rights, "this is not enough."

Anne Ernault once wrote, “I knew her love for me and the inequality between us: she cooked potatoes and milk for me from morning to night so that I could sit in the lecture theater and listen. "Teacher Talks about Plato" places the mother-daughter relationship within the class context of society. In the "Naples Quartet", the heroine Lenon goes from hating her commoner mother to understanding her and becoming her - "A woman who does not love her mother is a lost woman."

You are welcome to write about your story with your mother, and you are also welcome to share more related good articles in the comment area, or tag articles or writers related to this issue.