I wrote a "My Turn" essay for next week's Newsweek, which runs in the digital edition this week, which got linked to Jezebel, which makes my head spin. It's about my choosing not have children.
Here's a link to the link.
And way cooler than THAT is the news that Liz Strout, who teaches at Queens University of Charlotte, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge!
About Me
- jessica handler
- Atlanta, Georgia, United States
- My first book, "Invisible Sisters: A Memoir" has been named one of "Twenty Five Books All Georgians Should Read!" I would love to visit your bookclub, either in person (in the South) or through the magic of electronics. My writing has received a "Special Mention" for a 2008 Pushcart Prize. I have been honored with a residency at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, CT., a Fellowship at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts in Rabun Gap, Georgia, and the 2009 Peter Taylor Nonfiction Fellowship at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Locally, I teach workshops in creative writing, memoir, and feature journalism, and am a member of the faculty of an art college, where I teach screenwriting. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte (N.C.) and a B.S. in Communication from Emerson College, in Boston. I used to work in television. I did not push the broom behind the elephant. Usually, I served as mahout - I drove the (allegorical) elephant. If he was SAG or AFTRA. Rock stars do not scare me.
7 comments:
Oh I love that My Turn column! Congrats
Thank you! I just looked at your blog; it's so gorgeous!
Dang girl, you are everywhere these days. As you deserve to be.
Thank you for your thoughtful, poignant & deeply honest essay in "My Turn." I hope that many will read your story and learn more about the many reasons people have for deciding whether to become parents. It constantly amazes me that inquiring about the absence of children is somehow considered an open topic for commentary. I was fortunate to give birth to my amazing daughter at age 42. Since then, I have been dealing with secondary infertility and have experienced multiple miscarriages. Yet not a week goes by without some stranger asking me (sometimes within days of a miscarriage), "So, when are you going to give her a little sister or brother?"
As your essay described, there are a myriad of reasons that impact a person's decision to have children - a decision with profound impacts on multiple levels for the rest of your life. Thank you for sharing the reasons behind your decision.
Annelise, thank you for your kind comments!
That was a brilliant essay in Newsweek, and a much needed one. The glorification of motherhood now going on in our media culture is obnoxious and worse -- on tv, a pregnant ninth grader is portrayed as a modern day Madonna! I had two daughters in my early 40s after thinking motherhood was out for me. I adore them -- and I came to terms early with the many prices of motherhood ... but I have known a few families where genetic issues made that price unbearably high. More important, as a teacher, you are an influence and a role model for many, many growing girls in ways that their mothers -- being their mothers -- cannot. I went to an all-girls school in which childless, and many unmarried, women dominated the faculty, and they made a huge difference in my life. In some cases I have been able to relay that to them ... I'm sure that as time goes by, you will have more and more communications where you see your gifts carried on in the young people you teach.
Best wishes!
Anonymous - thank you! I've been traveling with the book and not good about blog-responding on time, but your note was terrific. Thanks again!
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