Month: January 2011

an Ecologist\’s Journey To Motherhood
by Sandra Steingraber

Another excellent book about pregnancy, Having Faith is a sensitive memoir with a very scientific bent. (And it\’s not religious in nature; she named her daughter Faith, thus the title). Part of the book simply focuses on the author\’s experience being pregnant: what it\’s like to have morning sickness, mood swings, to face choosing between relief offered by the medical establishment during labor alongside the desire to avoid interventions and do it all naturally. Steingraber is a scientist herself, so at every stage of her pregnancy she contemplates the effects environmental toxins and pollution can have on the developing fetus. It gets very particular: why does a mother who takes thalidomide on one certain day have a baby born with no ears, a mother who takes it a few days later one born without arms? for example. The stories of birth defects caused by ignorance, indifference or simply unavoidable ingestion of toxins can be a bit horrifying, but at the same time this book did not leave me feeling frightened. If anything, it\’s very informative and really makes you think about what you\’re putting into your body. And the effects that environmental factors can have on a baby don\’t end when it\’s born, either. Steingraber asserts that since a baby in utero or a nursing child ingests everything the mother does, at even higher concentrations, human babies are the very top of the food chain and face the most dire consequences from environmental pollution. It\’s kind of scary how much is unknown about this subject (or at least was when the book was written) and to think of the pollutants that could be present in your breastmilk (could the best possible food for your new baby also be the most contaminated?) but again, I didn\’t find the issue highly alarming so much as just something to really consider and another motivation to eat healthier, organic foods. Aside from all that, the book is written with such insight, skill and even humor that it\’s a pleasure to read.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 342 pages, 2001

by Laim O\’Flaherty

This novel describes what happened in one impoverished mountain region of Ireland when famine spread because potato crops failed. It starts out in one small family living on a plot of rented land; their initial discovery from a neighbor that disease is spreading through the potato fields which at first is not their biggest concern as one of their family members is sick, another expecting her first child. When it becomes apparent that most of the potatoes are ruined, at first the people turn to other means: they eat their sheep, or move in with better-off family neighbors, or travel down to the village to seek work. But as the second planting season comes and even more potatoes fail, things start to get serious and the entire community is afflicted. Famine doesn\’t just follow what sufferings the peasants faced but moves through a whole cast of characters: the local shopkeeper, village priest, English landlords and other public figures. When the scope of disaster becomes clear, everyone reacts differently. Some attempt to help the poor but are inept. Others only look out for their own interests, try to take advantage of the situation, or simply ignore what\’s going on. The poor cling to each other or turn on their friends; some disappear into the mountains or try to leave the country, others riot and take up arms against those who promised help and failed to bring it. They watch in despair as their few remaining animals are confiscated by the landlords for unpaid rent, their other crops exported to make up for losses, and they are left with nothing. In the end, disease spreads, children starve, old people sit in a stupor in empty houses. Only one of the main characters escapes with any hope for the future.

It\’s really very dismal. I thought, when I first began reading, that it was going to stick with the initial family, the Kilmartins, and describe everything through their experience (rather like Steinbeck\’s The Grapes of Wrath was told mostly from the viewpoint of the Joad family). But actually the bulk of it jumps around between the landlord, village doctor and religious leaders, describing lots of intrigues, suspicions and meetings that ultimately just confused or bored me. I was loosing interest in the middle but pressed on, simply wanting to know what happened. The final chapters focused back on the poor family again, and that felt more immediate and interesting. It really is a sad story but unfortunately the characters were portrayed with so little emotion I didn\’t really feel for any of them.

I read this book hoping I\’d learn more about what happened when the potato blight caused famine throughout Ireland in the 1800\’s. I\’m still vague on many of the details but have a more general picture of it now. I only wish the story had been told better.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 466 pages, 1937

more opinions at:
A Cuban in London
anyone else?

the Emotional Life of New Mothers
by Elisabeth Bing and Libby Colman

Written by a psychologist and the childbirth educator credited with introducing the Lamaze method to the US, this book deals with the emotional highs and lows of new motherhood. It is organized in stages, describing what new mothers might expect to experience during the first few hours after birth, the first several days with a newborn, the first six weeks and on up to a year. Discussed are not only the joys of being a new mom but also the stress, ambivalence and emotional turmoil that can accompany it, including things like feeling uncertain, changes in roles with your marriage partner, anger and frustration, etc. There\’s lots of helpful information on how to handle difficult emotions and when to recognize that you need help (such as in the case of postpartum depression). While most of the book is rather dry and clinical reading (I actually found it kind of boring) some quotes by new mothers sharing their own experiences help make it more personal and let new moms know that whatever they\’re experiencing, they\’re not alone. Laughter and Tears is a good resource to have.

Rating: 3/5 ……. 276 pages, 1997

Tales of Real-Life Motherhood
edited by Camille Peri and Kate Moses

Another collection of true stories, on the focus of motherhood. This book really stands out from the others of its like that I\’ve read. It has excellent writing, intelligent and thought-provoking subjects. Don\’t be put off by the title. It\’s not, as I first assumed, a book about moms that are \”better\” than the rest for some reason. Not a book about how to be a parent, but what it\’s like to be a parent. Mothers who Think is about moms who remain themselves, how they work parenting into every other aspect of their lives. The stories aren\’t sugar-coated nor are they complaining; most are painfully honest and have an emotional depth that will touch you in one way or another. Everything from difficult pregnancies to mothers struggling to raise their children alone, one with an autistic son who wants to play soccer. Mothers who deal with knowing their kids are miserable at school, who face loosing control when they\’re angry, who have to raise their children in bad neighborhoods, who go through a mess of issues in family court. There are stories of adoption, of loosing a child, of sibling rivalry and non-participant husbands. Some of the stories are sad, or laugh-out-loud funny, others just incredibly deep. I wish I had this book in my hands now to read it all over again. I remember at the time I even had my husband read three of the essays so we could discuss them. It\’s that good (usually he finds my parenting reads boring!)

Rating: 4/5 ….. 282 pages, 1999

more opinions at:
1330V

Mental Illness in Rural Ireland
by Nancy Scheper-Hughes

It\’s a bit odd the connections I\’ve found in my reading lately. Sitting in a waiting room flipping through a magazine a few weeks ago, I found an article about new studies that suggest the emotional health of a mother while pregnant can have affect her child- even into adulthood. What stood out to me in particular was the correlation found between mothers who suffered extreme physical and mental stress -such as starvation- during pregnancy, and children who grew up to have mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia. Then while reading Far From the Land, I noticed at one point Rice mentioned that almost every family he knew in rural Ireland had someone with a mental illness. I wondered if this had something to do with the famines Ireland went through in previous generations? I hadn\’t heard before about the prevalence of mental illness in Ireland. So it was with curiosity that I picked another book off my shelf, Saints Scholars and Schizophrenics, which addresses this very issue.

It\’s a case study of an isolated village society on the Western coast of Ireland in the 1970\’s. The author, an anthropologist, spent several years living in the village and taking note of all the customs around her. Particularly the less-known, seldom-spoken of customs that pervaded private households and that, she felt, contributed to the high incident of mental illness in rural Irish communities. It\’s rather a dismal book. Discussed in detail is how the community was slowly disintegrating; commerce failing, young people emigrating away from the island, old bachelors living their lives on lonely farms, few people marrying into the area, even fewer babies born. She paints an image of a community loosing its vitality and being constricted under societal and religious mores that kept them from intimacy- not only between peers who seldom discuss personal matters but also between husband and wife, between mother and child; it seems a whole group of people who hold their distance and then face lifelong frustrations. Most interesting to me was the section that examined family dynamics, particularly how parents\’ expectations of their childrens\’ roles affected the society.

I noted that the author points out that she didn\’t necessarily believe that social conditions were the sole cause of schizophrenia, but that she suspected they would \”exacerbate what may be an initial vulnerability or tendency.\” At the same time she questioned whether the disease could really be hereditary, as it was most prevalent among the elderly bachelors who had no children. For that reason she was looking closely at social conditions to see if there was an underlying cause of mental stress. I also appreciated the introduction, where the author talked about how the publication of her book affected the people she knew in that little village; even though she gave it another name and tried to make the people she mentioned anonymous, many of the villagers easily identified themselves in the pages and were hurt or mortified by what she wrote. I wonder how that little village is doing now, some forty years later.

One thing I didn\’t find in the book that I was half-expecting were descriptions of erratic behavior and how people either ignored or shunned it. Such incidents are only mentioned in passing, and more time is spent divulging information gained from interviews both with families in the community and patients in the mental hospital. There\’s lots of graphs full of data but I didn\’t look at them too closely. Altogether it\’s an interesting, if somewhat somber, book to read.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 245 pages, 1979

keeps growing!
Links go to where I noticed the book; titles without a link I came across in my reading.

Kasey to the Rescue by Ellen Rogers- Bookfoolery and Babble
Food Fray by Lisa Weasel- Sophisticated Dorkiness
Laika by Nick Abadzis- You’ve Gotta Read This!
Pegasus by Robin McKinley from Jenny’s Books
Conundrum by Jan Morris- Things Mean a Lot
Stalking Irish Madness by Patrick Tracey- The Book Lady’s Blog
The Devil\’s Share by Kris Farmen- The Black Sheep Dances
Elegy for a Disease by Anne Finger
The Color of Earth (and perhaps its sequels) by Kim Dong Hwa- You’ve Gotta Read This!

Have you read any of these?

A Story of Disability, Pregnancy and Birth
by Anne Finger

Even though I read it some years ago, I still remember how this book took me by surprise. When I picked it up I just thought it was about a woman dealing with a long pregnancy, having a child born past the due date, but there\’s so much more than than. It\’s about a woman disabled by polio who is a strong feminist, worked in an abortion clinic and is an advocate for disability rights. She finds herself with a possibly risky pregnancy. Her story dealt with a lot more political issues than I\’d considered before regarding women and birth choice. Making the author\’s decisions even more complicated are the facts that she has bad memories of hospital experiences as a child when doctors tried to correct her limp. She wants to have a home birth but things don\’t go well and she ends up in the hospital with scary complications and the possibility of a baby with brain damage. I don\’t know which part was harder to read, about her difficulties being pregnant with a physical disability, or the heartwrenching weeks she spent in the hospital watching her baby get poked, prodded and tested in the neo-natal intensive care unit, never sure from one day to the next if he would be okay. Past Due is one of those books that\’s very hard to put down, but I don\’t know if I\’d recommend it for a first-time mom to read (like I did!) It can be very intense.

I read this one (from the library) before being aware of the author\’s other works. Now I want to read her more recent book, Elegy for a Disease, which is about her childhood experiences.

Rating: 4/5 ……. 203 pages, 1990

More opinions at:
Baxter Sez 
Library Thing
Literature Arts and Medicine Database
anyone else?

by William and Martha Sears

At the time I read this book (seven years ago) it seemed very complete and informative to me. The Birth Book covers such topics as how to prepare yourself for birth, both pyhsically and mentally, how to research all your options, how to manage pain during birth, and what the birthing experience might actually be like. It includes lots of medical information as well as first-hand accounts of many different mothers\’ experiences. Well-illustrated, too. There are quite a few drawbacks, though, which actually make me hesitate to recommend it. First, it\’s been seventeen years since this book went into print. A lot has probably changed in that time and I\’m sure there is better, more up-to-date information out there. Secondly, the authors lean very heavily towards natural childbirth. When I was expecting my first child, I was very interested in natural childbirth and so appreciated reading about doulas, water births, midwives, having your baby at home, etc. However it turns out that going au natural was not the best choice I could have made. The Sears\’ methods for \”managing pain\” didn\’t work for me at all. Theirs is not the only book I read on natural childbirth, nor did I avoid books about traditional hospital methods, so I\’m not blaming the book for my expectations. But I do feel that it helped encourage my hopes of doing it all-natural and heightened my uneasiness with interventions and medications. So my suggestion is- if you\’re a very strong woman and know for sure you want a natural birth, this book is useful. If you\’re uncertain about it or a first-time mother, be sure you read some other opinions. The Birth Book is really biased in favor of home births (and other alternatives) and rather negative towards hospitals and doctors. Take it all with a grain of salt.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 269 pages, 1994

an Irish Memoir
by Thomas J. Rice

Far From the Land was on my bookshelf because I won it from Carrie K. in a giveaway. I\’m glad that the Dare finally encouraged me to pick up this book.

Rice\’s memoir is about growing up in rural Ireland on a poor, rocky farm that barely sustained his family. He tells about the community spirit, neighbors coming together to help each other. About the poor schooling, running up and down the mountainsides with his friends, playing Gaelic football (quite rougher than the version of soccer I\’m familiar with!), working with his neighbor\’s fabulous Arabian horses, passion for music and dance, many things. Being the only son and sole child remaining at home when his older sisters all emigrated, he quit school at an early age to help his mother on the farm (his father being mostly absent) and worked hard to make it a more prosperous place. But eventually he realized that there wasn\’t much future on such poor land, and convinced his mother to sell everything so they could move to America. After seeing how tightly knit their community was, and how much pride they took in working the land, it was heartbreaking to see them pull up their roots and leave it all behind. Their first stop in Sheffield, England where one of his sisters had a boarding house, was much more difficult than they\’d imagined, but young Rice (only seventeen) and his mother persisted in following their dream against all obstacles. The book is about more than just his family and experiences growing up. There\’s also quite a lot of Irish history, which I pretty much unfamiliar with, so the first few chapters were a bit difficult to get through. But eventually I came to see how all the legends, heroes and tales kept alive in ballads and oral memories were an integral part of the people\’s character, and shaped what they were even though the events were several generations past. Rice\’s own mother was involved in the Irish Civil War of 1922 and quite the local hero; everyone looked up to her and she really was an amazing woman. I really enjoyed reading this memoir. It was thoughtful, colorful, poignant and humorous at times. Full of unforgettable characters and wonderful tales. I\’m anxious to see if Rice writes another book about his experiences in America someday…

Rating: 4/5 ……… 358 pages, 2009

more opinions at:
Writer\’s Voice
CelticLady\’s Reviews
5 Minutes for Books

DISCLAIMER:

All books reviewed on this site are owned by me, or borrowed from the public library. Exceptions are a very occasional review copy sent to me by a publisher or author, as noted. Receiving a book does not influence my opinion or evaluation of it

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