Mother’s to be or not to be? With this Central question, the canadian author Sheila Heti discusses in her new book “motherhood”. A novel about a chosen childlessness and the discussion with her.
This is again a Feast for the flower trade. 130 million euros from the German for cut flowers for mother’s day, in most of the countries in this year on the 12. May is celebrated. Mother is the Best mother, the Best thing that can happen to a woman, is it?
The young writer from Canada, who has written an entire book about her decision to escape from all the expectations and get a child speaks decided. Sheila Heti was mid-30’s, when they began work on their auto-fictional novel, and 40, as he appeared in the last year. Now, motherhood is “” also in German. A self-questioning, conversations with Friends, colleagues, Strangers – and with the Beloved. Sad, sometimes hilarious, definitely touching and enlightening.
Identical Life Stories
The protagonist of “motherhood” has no name, but between her and Heti there are a lot of Parallels. Both are about the same age, lives as a writer in Toronto – together with your friend who has a child from a previous relationship. And Both come from a Hungarian-Jewish family – Hetis grandmother survived the Holocaust. “If you don’t get children, have won the Nazis”, it says at one point. What a load!
A successful worldwide book: “motherhood” has been translated into 15 languages
“Motherhood”: a feminist Statement
In the DW-interview in Toronto, Sheila Heti says that she “understand motherhood” as a feminist Statement. You have long sought after literary models, philosophical texts, which deal with the childless woman, but: nothing. While in the last 20 years several books have appeared over the shadow side of the mother one (the British writer Rachel Cusk wrote in 2001 about the loss of self-determination as a mother; still greater is the excitement, especially in Germany, was the study of the Israeli sociologist Orna Donath 2015, the reported in “Regretting Motherhood” of many mothers who regret it, to be become a mother), Hetis figure is actually an isolated case.
A woman wants a child. It has never wanted. You want to write, you want to be an artist. You want to be able to decide, and she does it. But is it right? Would you feel as a woman in her late 30’s urgent desire to start a family? Earlier, says Heti, had women had no choice, due to methods of contraception and birth control that is different today. Social pressure, however, remained.
Writer Sheila Heti (left) and DW-author Sabine Kieselbach in Toronto
What is the role of we to write women?
And also the reactions on Hetis questions and Doubts and Insist on your Not-children of desire (“I know that I have more than most mothers. (…) It is a kind of sadness is not to want something, what gives the lives of so many other important”) show that she has hit a nerve. “Maternity” will be read mainly by women, says Sheila Heti, and also criticize most fiercely.
Apart from the fact that men should deal with the issue, is it not high time that women, their self-image in the 21st century. A century of change and the freedom of choice grant, the men had always been?
Sheila Heti is a canadian writer. Her parents are Jewish emigrants from Hungary. Heti studied art history and philosophy at the University of Toronto and dramaturgy at the National Theatre School of Canada. Her book “Mother” (from the English of Thomas Überhoff) appeared this year in the Rowohlt Verlag.