You are a woman with a job that you like, you have a child and suddenly, or progressively, you see that motherhood is absorbing you and you feel that it takes away your essence, who you were until then, who you had been, who you thought you were and who you wanted to be You don't like leaving your son so many hours at the service of others, you feel guilty for being a bad mother. You leave work to focus on your son, you dedicate yourself to taking care of the house and the child and you lose track of yourself. Add to that a husband who spends five days a week away working and when he comes back you feel bad for him with your stuff. And that you are a progressive mother who is above what they will say, etc.
Exactly that happens to the protagonist of Canina (Blackie Books) and she feels so overcome that her body says enough is enough and she starts her own revolt. How? Well, at first she notices a bush of hair on the back of her neck, her fangs are sharper, her sense of smell sharpens, and she is hungry for meat. Yeah, she kind of morphs into a bitch and clings to the Night Bitch name, and many nights she goes out and gets out of control in a seemingly endless crescendo. A novel with a terrifying point peppered with humor and tenderness.
Something similar happened to the author, the North American Rachel Yoder (1978): “After having my son, I didn't write for two years and I felt I was losing my identity. I felt lost and angry because I did not understand how I had ended up staying at home with the child and without writing when all my life I had wanted to have a professional career and be away from home”, she says from the hotel in Barcelona where she is these days to participate in the festival 42 of fantastic genres. “What can I do with this feeling? I thought. I started writing and anger was the engine that fueled the writing. I wrote the first third of the book in a hurry, once I found that honest and angry voice that thinks a lot and I followed it, ”he says.
“I felt very alone in my motherhood –explains Yoder–, as my protagonist. I felt I wasn't doing it right, and when I published the book I was surprised that so many people, so many women especially, told me they felt the same way. The brain deceives us because we think we are alone, that we are unique, and no, so I made an effort to relate to other mothers.
Somehow, she reflects, pregnancy and motherhood "remind us that we are mammals, we are animals." “Realizing my animal body was a very intense experience, and I guess the book also comes from here, from feeling like a mammal and from motherhood,” she adds.
Yoder remembers how her childhood conditioned her, since she grew up in a Mennonite community, with a father of Amish origin: “Everything very religious and traditional, and as a child I rebelled against patriarchy and the feeling that men are the heads of family". The whole book, she says, is like "a rejection of traditional ideas about gender, marriage or fatherhood", and the protagonist "tries to imagine a new myth about motherhood", expressed with the finding of an inspiring ethnographer who describes communities of women that are transformed, in addition to the memory of his grandmother, half witch.
The novel becomes entangled and in the end it becomes the story of a redemption and growth of a mother who makes peace with herself through animality and art.
Catalan version, here
