Wild Mother Dancing

Barbara Yitsch is an associate at Duncan’s English Language Consulting
Ltd. in Edmonton.

Di Brandt re-examines and challenges traditional readings of literature
to search for the mother figure, often missing and just as often
maligned, in Western mythology. Brandt’s readable style eases readers
through her frequent theoretical citings, especially to feminists, such
as Adrienne Rich, Mary Daly, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Marianne
Hirsch. Brandt uses literature as a means of delving into the effects
that male mythology has had on female sociology. In the writings of
Margaret Laurence, Daphne Marlatt, Jovette Marchessault, and Joy Kogawa,
plus a “Conversation with Seven Women,” Brandt locates and
re-establishes the maternal side of humanity. Believing in women’s
creative power, whose life-giving ability patriarchal forces have
furiously tried to claim as their own, from ancient times to modern
Disney, Brandt wants, at the very least, to make mothers visible again.

Brandt appropriately structures Wild Mother Dancing to complement the
progression of discovery, from “The Absent Mother” to “The Absent
Mother’s (Amazing) Comeback” to “Remembering with Mothertongue.”
For her singular theoretical purpose, she draws no distinction between
everywoman and the artist; she’s evaluating cultural norms, not
literature.

In writing a cultural evaluation, Brandt introduces the hint of a
problem. Not at all a synchronic approach to the issue, which considers
the complexity and infrastructures of any one culture at any given time,
Brandt’s diachronic treatment of mother oppression raises the spectre
of presentation. So it’s somehow reassuring to read the following
evenhanded concession to society at large: “Maternal consciousness,
while ... representing an important and indeed imperative mode of
perception, is not idealized by Laurence.” The wisdom in Brandt’s
text brings the ghostly image of the mother into clear daytime focus.