4.0
Black Milk
ByPublisher 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.
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.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesBlack Milk Reviews
4.0
putsalreads
Created 15 days agoShare
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“I went into Black Milk with pretty low expectations after not loving The Architect’s Apprentice, but this book completely surprised me. It begins in her “Manifesto of the Single Girl” period, when she believed a life dedicated to art meant staying far away from marriage and children. From that starting point, she takes us through her shift into partnership, pregnancy, birth and the confusing, vulnerable reality of postpartum.
One of the things I enjoyed most is how she brings in women writers like Zelda Fitzgerald and many others. She talks about them in such an easy, familiar way that it feels like she is having conversations across time with women who faced similar questions about creativity, ambition and domestic life.
Her inner Thumbelinas are the heart of the book. Little Miss Practical, Miss Ambitious Chekhovian, Miss Highbrowed Cynic, Dame Dervish and Mama Rice Pudding. Each one represents a part of her identity, and their arguments mirror the conflict many women feel as they move from singlehood into motherhood. I found these sections both funny and painfully accurate, especially when they start drowning each other out during her postpartum period.
And then there is Lord Poton, who represents her postpartum depression. He is shown as a dark presence that silences all her inner voices. Reading those chapters made me realize how much of my own postpartum experience I never fully processed. I did not understand how bad it actually was until I saw someone portray it so clearly. It felt like she put language to something I had been too overwhelmed to name.
The book also raises questions that I deeply relate to. Women are told we can do everything. We want our careers to grow, we want our own lives and identities, and yet we also question whether our desire for motherhood is a genuine choice or something shaped by how we were raised and what was expected from us. But even with that awareness, there is still the simple truth that some of us genuinely want a child. I appreciated that she lets that contradiction exist without judging it.
Black Milk felt honest in a way that writing on motherhood rarely does. As someone balancing work, ambition and being a mother, I felt understood on almost every page. I will definitely read more of her books.”
tagreed
Created 28 days agoShare
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Madeline Brozen
Created 2 months agoShare
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“You really cannot go wrong with Elif Shafaq. After enjoying her fiction and as a new mom, I was drawn to this non fiction, personal piece on motherhood. The story told through these little finger women was so powerful and thoughtful of these different aspects of any persons personality. Women especially are multifaceted and carry these different identities and versions of themselves. Ultimately, you need to embrace them all to go through life in a way that is true to yourself. New moms, expecting moms and just fans of Shafaq should read this one.”
LefAurelia
Created 3 months agoShare
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Mia Iordănoaia
Created 4 months agoShare
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About Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and a champion of women’s rights and freedom of expression. Her books have been translated into fifty-five languages. Her novels include The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, The Architect’s Apprentice, Three Daughters of Eve, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, which was a finalist for the 2019 Booker Prize, The Island of Missing Trees, which is a November 2021 Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick, and, most recently, There Are Rivers in the Sky. She is also the author of a memoir, Black Milk: On the Conflicting Demands of Writing, Creativity, and Motherhood. An active political commentator, columnist, and public speaker, she lives in London. Her website is elifshafak.com.
Other books by Elif Shafak
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