A review by pekoparty
The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem by Julie Phillips

5.0

Julie Phillips is magnificent in her observation and retelling of the motherhood experience as experienced by Audre Lorde, Doris Lessing, Susan Sontag, Alice Walker, Ursula K. Le Guin, Alice Neel, and others. How does one keep their mind in the face of Motherhood? Their creative practice? Their absolute autonomy? Each woman is looked at so tenderly and with such bite. I chewed my way through this! I respected how Phillips wove a thread through the lives of the women, through events and experiences that connected them--the loss of Martin Luther King Jr., Aldermaston marches against nuclear arms, and attending specific colleges. I was overjoyed at the queerness, the open relationships, the messy, and the sticky. Most importantly, even in discomfort, Phillips brings a tender and direct approach to writing. Any of these women could have been my mother. My mother could have been any of these women. And as we redefine motherhood for women, Trans people, and the genderqueer people navigating new parental terrain, I have a newfound confidence that we can retain ourselves despite what history and society have told us.

If you do anything creative and have given birth or will give birth or long to, this is for you. If you watched your creative parent do their practice while parenting you, this is for you.