Patti Smith quote "The thing that bothered me the most was when I had to return to the public eye in ’95 or ’96 when my husband died. We lived a very simple lifestyle in a more reclusive way in which he was king of our domain. I don’t drive, I didn’t have much of an income, and without him, I had to find a way of making a living. Besides working in a bookstore, the only thing I knew how to do was to make records—or to write poetry, which isn’t going to help put your kids through school. But when I started doing interviews, people kept saying “Well, you didn’t do anything in the 80s,” and I just want to get Elvis Presley’s gun out and shoot the television out of their soul. How could you say that? The conceit of people, to think that if they’re not reading about you in a newspaper or magazine, then you’re not doing anything.
Dans l’imaginaire collectif, la maternité rime souvent avec bonheur et célébration de la vie. Pourtant, la quête de la parentalité, l’expérience de la grossesse, de l’accouchement et du post-partum n’est pas toujours aussi idyllique. La parentalité n’échappe pas aux contradictions de notre société actuelle où liberté, capacité, avancées médicales et productivité s’entrechoquent. Depuis quelques années, de nombreuses personnes osent partager leurs histoires, leurs parcours en procréation médicalement assistée (PMA), leurs vécus d’accouchements difficiles et d’expériences traumatiques comme la fausse-couche ou la mortinaissance. Des voix s’élèvent de divers milieux pour nommer certaines pratiques comme étant des formes d’abus ou de violences gynécologiques et obstétricales, appelant à repenser les approches. Les conditions d’accouchement ont été à nouveau un sujet d’actualité et de débat de société dès le début de la pandémie, durant laquelle des milliers de femmes ont accouché en solitaire : diverses méthodes d’accouchement ont momentanément été empêchées, montrant ainsi que la maternité demeure un terrain de revendications féministes et un terreau fertile de réflexions.
“Being a mother entails an enormous amount of repetitive tasks. I became a maintenance worker. I felt completely abandoned by my culture because it didn’t have a way to incorporate sustaining work” -Mierles Ukeles
In Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Diane di Prima explores the first three decades of her extraordinary life. Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a lifelong commitment to become a poet, first made when she was in high school. Immersing herself in Manhattan’s early 1950s Bohemia, di Prima quickly emerged as a renowned poet, an influential editor, and a single mother at a time when this was unheard of. Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world.
