Noch eine Biographie

Gestern Mittag in der U-Bahn habe ich die Roth-Biographie ausgelesen, war aber irgendwie nicht wirklich überzeugt davon. Ich hatte das Gefühl, all das schon in seinen Romanen gelesen zu haben, die offensichtlich immer sehr autobiographisch gefärbt sind. Andererseits hat er aber die Namen seiner Ehefrauen verfremdet.

Am Nachmittag habe ich mir dann neues Lesefutter herausgesucht und am Abend gleich damit begonnen - und es hat mich sofort gepackt.

Meine derzeitige Lektüre:

Elif SHAFAK
Black Milk

On Writing, Motherhood and the Harem within

Product Description: An acclaimed Turkish novelist's personal account of balancing a writer's life with a mother's life.

After the birth of her first child in 2006, Turkish writer Elif Shafek suffered from postpartum depression that triggered a profound personal crisis. Infused with guilt, anxiety, and bewilderment about whether she could ever be a good mother, Shafak stopped writing and lost her faith in words altogether. In this elegantly written memoir, she retraces her journey from free-spirited, nomadic artist to dedicated by emotionally wrought mother. Identifying a constantly bickering harem of women who live inside of her, each with her own characteristics-the cynical intellectual, the goal-oriented go-getter, the practical-rational, the spiritual, the maternal, and the lustful-she craves harmony, or at least a unifying identity. As she intersperses her own experience with the lives of prominent authors such as Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Alice Walker, Ayn Rand, and Zelda Fitzgerald, Shafak looks for a solution to the inherent conflict between artistic creation and responsible parenting.

With searing emotional honesty and an incisive examination of cultural mores within patriarchal societies, Shafak has rendered an important work about literature, motherhood, and spiritual well-being.