The public motherhood story is that of an instinctual, joyous bond. The private motherhood experience is not so simple, and open to much existential conflict and angst. The public story intensifies the private experience, providing no permissible space for diverse, complex feelings.
This book examines the reality of motherhood. From understanding our own mothers, to childbirth through to grandparenting via a range of stories, ideas, photography and art.
Iman Mersal is an Egyptian poet ad associate professor of Arabic literature at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her books include Alternative Geography (2006) and Until I give Up the Idea of Home (2013).
How To Mend is the fourth book in the Kayfa Ta series. Each book in the series is an essay commissioned in the style of how-to manuals that situate themselves in the space between the technical and the reflective, the everyday and the speculative, the instructional and the intuitive, and the factual and the fictional.