Mother's Day - Song of the Sad Mother

Fiction. Poetry. Women's Studies. Gender Studies. Edited by Catharine Nicely. Translated by Zoe Hawkins. Maria-Maria had broken away from her domineering mother long before her physical death, or at least she thought she had. Neither mother's cruel lashings nor her cutting criticism had prevented her from rejecting the values and ideals that her authoritarian and Communist party-line-towing parents held so dearly. To their crushing dismay, she would not deploy her artistic talents toward embodying the Ceaucescian model of the "new human." Quite the contrary, she was going to revel in being imperfect, and embark on a journey of self-exploration in order to discover what it means to be a self that is not defined by being her mother's daughter or a mother to her own daughter. Putting everything at stake to detach from the primal bond that both oppresses and eludes her, Maria-Maria opens herself up to, and achieves, the unexpected.