More than any other experience, motherhood is about duality: virtually a definition of the divided self. In A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother, Rachel Cusk writes that "birth is not merely that which divides women from men: it also divides women from themselves, so that a woman’s understanding of what it is to exist is profoundly changed..."
Rinki Bhattacharya’s collection is in three parts: ‘Our Mothers’, ‘Ourselves’ and ‘Our Children’. This simple structure has a curious overall effect of seeing the biological clock run backwards. We start with death beds and end up with cradles.
Five of the eight authors in the first section talk about their mothers’ death, and the poignant reversal of roles—when the...
