Borderlands and Crossroads

Motherhood does not just originate in the body, but in the worldâa place, a region, a country or nation, a landscape, a language, a culture. Mothers are, as novelist Rachel Cusk once observed, âthe countries we come from.â This unique literary ant... Read more

Motherhood does not just originate in the body, but in the worldâa place, a region, a country or nation, a landscape, a language, a culture. Mothers are, as novelist Rachel Cusk once observed, âthe countries we come from.â This unique literary anthology features thirty-five poems and twenty-three works of prose (creative non-fiction and short fiction). Here, forty-three award-winning and accomplished writers reflect on their complex twenty-first century familial identities and relationships, exploring maternal landscapes of all kinds, including those of heritage, matrilineage, geneaology, geography, emigration, war, exile, alienation, and affiliation. Spanning the globeâfrom the U.K, the USA and Canada, Egypt, the former Yugoslavia, France, Africa, Korea and South Americaâthese intimate and honest narratives of the heart cross borders and define crossroads that are personal and political, old and new. Recovering the maternal landscape through poetry and prose, these writers both memorialize and celebrate the power of family to define, limit, and challenge us. Less