Rhet/Comp mothers (Thank you, Alex Hidalgo and Courtney Weber!!!) ran this interview with me about single parenting and academic life. Here is a snippet.
‘Balance’ I guess for me is like that. It involves forgetting I’m a mother for stretches of time and then remembering that immense responsibility with a kind of embodied lurch that takes my breath away. And then it involves doing the mundane things that make up family life. It involves waking up early before my daughter to set out her breakfast, which includes making her a face out of whatever fruit we have on hand, and then ignoring her completely as I stretch and meditate and write and get my head straight, and then braiding her hair, maybe yelling at her about getting her shoes on, then hugging her in apology, and walking her to school, sometimes listening to her all the way and sometimes not. It involves hustling to get a better paycheck so that she can have the life I want to give her. It involves swallowing my pride and asking neighbors for help. It involves, too, a commitment to making my work, the academic and the creative and the pedagogical and the political, matter in the world my daughter is inhabiting and will live her life in. It involves trying to raise a woke little person, which means trying (and failing and trying again) to be woke myself. It involves reading in the bath together, painting our nails, watching the Great Interior Design Challenge. It involves picking up a million and three smelly pairs of socks. Oh god, and the math homework.
You can read the full interview here.