Hi there! I'm Kimberly Hirsh. My pronouns are she/ her/hers. I'm somebody's mom. I work as a school librarian. I have a PhD in information and library science. I love to read, play tabletop and video games, and make things. I used to perform in theater and improv comedy and I may one day again. I have been extremely online since 1993 and still enjoy tinkering on the web. I manage multiple chronic illnesses. I'm married to my kid's dad. We have a cat.
Want to get in touch? You can reach me by email.
🔖📚 In a Raft of New Books, Motherhood From (Almost) Every Angle by Parul Sehgal (The New York Times).
Recent books on motherhood, however, frequently and sometimes unwittingly, illustrate a different phenomenon: how motherhood dissolves the border of the self but shores up, often violently, the walls between classes of women.
🔖📚 Read Maggie Nelson: Inflections Forever New by Ariel Lewiton (Guernica).
We’re all human beings with bodily needs living within a system. We don’t need to prove that we’re not a part of the fabric of the culture in order to want to change it.
🔖📚 Read Why All the Books About Motherhood? by Laura Elkin (The Paris Review).
Another bookmark I’ve been sitting on for years.
These new books recast motherhood not as the reactionary choice, the choice made because it’s what’s socially expected, but as something hard won, intellectually demanding, a form of creative labor. Not something that takes you away from your work but something that is now both frame and canvas for it.
🔖📚 Read We Need to Talk About Whiteness in Motherhood Memoirs by Nancy Reddy (Electric Literature).
I bookmarked this 4 years ago & am only reading it now. Reddy points out admitting you’re struggling carries a different risk for moms of Color.
🔖📝📚 Read The parent trap: can you be a good writer and a good parent? by Lara Feigel (The Guardian)
Feigel writes about motherly ambivalence.
🔖 Read Writer Moms: Can We Do Deep Work While the Kids are Home? by Sara Bates.
Before we do… the practical things we need to do in order to create space for deep work, we need to cultivate the belief that our creativity is worth all that trouble.
Want to read: A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle 📚
Want to read: How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and Other Parents) by Hettie Judah 📚
🔖📝📚 Read I left my baby to write this. How do artists balance creativity and the ache for their child? by Rhiannon Lucy Coslett (The Guardian).
Coslett has as many questions as answers and mentions a lot of books I’m keen to check out.
Want to read: This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris 📚
