Pregnancy is a time full of joy and wonder. It’s also full of terror and anxiety. If you’re a writer, add to all that the fear that you may never write again. So many famous women writers chose never to have children and I worried I couldn’t balance my all-consuming creative self with creating a whole new life. Sarah Manguso expresses some of this anxiety better than I could in a fantastic essay in Harper’s, but I wanted a baby badly enough to try to balance the two. One of the things that got me through the pregnancy and helped me nourish my creative self while transitioning from baby vessel to writer mama was surrounding myself with excellent and thoughtful books about pregnancy and parenthood by writers I respect and admire.

If you are pregnant, thinking of becoming pregnant, or know a creative person who is either, these are the books I recommend to nourish that creative soul while preparing for parenthood.

The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Memoir of Early Motherhood by Louise Erdrich

I’ve written more extensively about this book here. It’s a gorgeous amalgam of thoughts and essays about parenthood and writing by Louise Erdrich. She weaves together narratives from her three pregnancies with glimpses of how this National Book Award winning writer manages to write and parent at the same time. The book is also filled with quiet yet poignant observations of nature. The Blue Jay’s Dance is an excellent meditation and it’s easy to dip in and out of the book as you need inspiration and the comfort of seeing how other writer-parents do it.

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich

Most famous as a poet, Adrienne Rich is a deliciously rich thinker and this frank look at motherhood and the female experience from a feminist perspective helped me think more deeply about my own life experiences. It helped me understand how to inhabit myself as a woman and it gave me insight into my relationship with my mother. It was a healing book and one that made me think more deeply about the roles all of us play as parents, children, and fellow citizens. I will be a better parent because I read this book. I will also be a better wife and stronger in myself.

While looking at everything from literature to societal norms, Rich doesn’t shy away from difficult topics like abortion, but she also does not thrust an agenda upon the reader. This is an excellent book for any woman (or interested man) to read, it’s a must-read for any pregnant writer to find her own center and feelings about some very important issues.

Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother by Beth Ann Fennelly

One of the blurbs on this book reads, “The best book ever to give for a baby shower” and I am so grateful that a writer friend gave me a copy at one of my baby showers. Originally written as a series of letters from Beth Ann Fennelly (then a newish parent) to a dear friend, it’s easy to feel like you are the dear friend as you read Fennelly’s stories about parenting and gentle advice. Advice is such a tricky thing for the pregnant woman (it’s everywhere but so rarely does an advisor allow space for the advisee’s experience rather than rehashing theirs) and Fennelly gets it just right. This poet writes beautifully about everything from conception to labor, with the occasional book recommendation along the way.

I actually read this book in the week following the birth of my son and in the reading rediscovered all sorts of memories from my pregnancy that might have gotten lost otherwise.

My Creative Work

He’s not a novel or a book of poems, but my son, Remy Lucas, was (finally) born just over a week ago. I’m realizing that what everyone says is true—nothing I’ve read could have prepared me for this experience. But each of these books opened me up to the experience in their own way and helped me think more deeply about this amazing life change.

Oh, and I’m still writing. Even with an infant napping in my lap in the hours before dawn. I think, like Manguso, that becoming a parent has deepened the way I experience the world and will continue to do so. It’s certainly changed what I write about for now as I’m working on a series of poems about pregnancy and parenthood. I think, with time, that I’ll get better and better at incorporating the writing me and the parent me so that even when I write about other subjects, I can carry the things Remy teaches me into my writing.

What books have you read that blend parenthood and the creative life? I’m slowly rebuilding my to-read shelf and need your help…

How many times in life do we really get to devote ourselves to tomes anymore? One of the projects I’ve been working on as I prepare to have my first child is getting through my to-read shelf, and, not surprisingly, some of the thickest hardbacks are the very last ones I’m getting to. That includes The Selected Short Stories of Edith Wharton (390 pages) and a collection of five novels by Henry James (Daisy Miller, Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, and The Aspern Papers) (892 pages). Admittedly, I’m still working on the James collection, but after facing a truly embarrassing confusion between the two writers, I knew I had to write about it here.

Biographical Comparisons

Both transatlantic writers writing about a certain social class in the northeastern US and in England, I was a little surprised to learn (though I shouldn’t have been) that James (1843-1916) and Wharton (1862-1937) knew each other and that James was a mentor of sorts to Wharton. Both were American and spent considerable time abroad although I would have sworn that James was British. Their writing shares a similar sensibility cultivated by a social class where there are a lot of tacit rules to be followed and this gives the work of both writers a lot of subtext.

The Portrait of a Lady vs. The Age of Innocence

Was that biographical snippet included here just to absolve myself of the embarrassment I’m still feeling over conflating the two writers? Maybe. What happened was that late one night I started reading The Portrait of a Lady and, having watched more film adaptations of the work of Wharton and James than there could ever be books, I assigned Winona Ryder to the character of Isabel Archer. I was a little confused that the story was taking place on the wrong continent (in England) and eventually started to get annoyed that the introduction was so very long and became impatient to see the character of Countess Olenska.

I had completely conflated The Portrait of a Lady and The Age of Innocence.

My excuse (besides the fact that I’m sometimes a very poor reader) is that I strongly remember Ryder saying “Archer” a lot in the film (which makes sense because it’s her husband Newland’s last name). But it’s a pretty poor excuse considering I actually have read The Age of Innocence (though it’s been nearly a decade).

Not surprisingly, my relationship with The Portrait of a Lady changed a bit once I started reading it for itself. The book still feels overly long (I’m still reading it), although it’s a relief to read for what is happening on the page rather than what I think will happen. I can’t quite place Nicole Kidman in the book (that’s one adaptation I actually haven’t seen), and maybe that’s for the best.

I haven’t completely learned my lesson, though. I “watched” the miniseries for The Buccaneers this weekend while needlepointing a stocking for my son. God help us all if I ever pick that book up and try to remember if I’ve read it 🙂

Roman Fever

If I were to write a dissertation on James and Wharton, I’d no doubt find countless similarities (and differences) in their work. What struck me most, though, in reading these books so closely together is when they both brought up Roman Fever. I’d never heard of this curious thing before, but it seems to have been a fear that tourists had of Rome and particularly the area near the Colosseum that could prove deadly.

James wrote about the phenomenon in Daisy Miller, but Wharton’s treatment of it in “Roman Fever” is even more interesting where the fever has multiple meanings. The story really is quite wicked (in the most wonderful ways) and merits a re-read when I’m finally done with all these Jamesian novels.

Scary Stories

Both Wharton and  James wrote ghost stories, they lived in a time where mediumship and the supernatural were part of high society. James is of course famous for The Turn of the Screw which I have not read but I’ve seen at least one film of. Wharton wrote enough ghostly short stories to devote an entire collection to them and while reading The Selected Stories I have to say that those ghost stories were still some of my favorites. “Mr. Jones” in particular chills me every time.

My Real Love

I’m probably always going to be team Wharton. Although both writers carefully observed the manners of their time, there’s something warmer and perhaps more human about the way Wharton portrays her characters. I believe she actually has sympathy for them, whereas I don’t think James always does.

It’s funny, I actually wrote about Wharton in my graduate school application essay because I so admired her work. I thought in my reading of all of this contemporary fiction since that I’d moved on from my somewhat archaic tastes, but in re-reading Wharton I found I still love and relate to her work whereas reading James feels more to me like wandering through a show of John Singer Sargent portraits—there’s beauty and I can relate to the pictures a little, but the characters and their time seem so far away.

I’m officially on maternity leave right now and it’s about 90 degrees in Seattle, so while I have loads of time (at least until the little one decides he’s ready), I can’t really go outside and no excuse not to read. I might actually finish this James collection. Although I’m not sure I’ll make it through that Peter Nadas book I’ve been looking forward to (1100+pages)…

If this review made you want to read turn of the last century literature, pick up a copy of the Henry James collection or The Selected Short Stories of Edith Wharton from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.