Jennifer Case is an environmental author, editor and artistic writing on the College of Central Arkansas, and he or she’s additionally a mom. In her e book, We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood (Trinity College Press; 2024), Case explores the various ways in which moms may lose management, particularly in early motherhood – and the methods they will exert some management in a interval of life that feels, for some moms, uncontrollable.

Written throughout and within the aftermath of her second being pregnant, We Are Animals unpacks the ways in which early motherhood has been written about, argued over, legislated, idealized, and controlled by different individuals for hundreds of years. Case expertly weaves the experiences of different animals into this assortment of essays in order that moms – and anybody within the plight of moms – may draw inspiration and energy from the pure world.

I spoke to her from her dwelling in central Arkansas. This interview has been edited for size.

Hillary Moses Mohaupt: First thanks for this e book! I used to be struck by how well timed your e book is, and the way timeless it’s. Your youngsters are eight and twelve now, so early motherhood, the principle focus of this e book, is behind you. Are you able to inform me how the e book got here collectively, and why this appeared like the precise second to put in writing it?

Jennifer Case: I’m actually glad that it comes off as well timed and timeless, and that it captures that steadiness. I do suppose a whole lot of the essays are about motherhood in a time-less means, and hopefully they may resonate with individuals irrespective of once they grow to be—or grew to become—moms.

However I additionally wrote the vast majority of the essays in response to my second being pregnant, which was an unintended being pregnant in 2016, proper as Trump was elected. And at that individual second, reproductive justice had some setbacks, and in my private life I used to be experiencing this lack of management on the similar time that ladies throughout the nation had been experiencing a lack of rights that that they had beforehand had. The private and the political overlapped a lot that it raised a whole lot of questions for me, questions that I’d by no means needed to grapple with as a person, however all of the sudden right here they had been. And the e book supplied a solution to unpack all of that, discover it.

HMM: Talking of the timeliness and timelessness, I used to be simply desirous about the way you wrote again in 2016, and right here we’re, 9 years later, experiencing a Trump presidency once more and experiencing that lack of management once more. Do you suppose that context is a part of why the e book feels so related?

JC: Completely. I began sending this manuscript in 2020. It took a few years, and there was this second after Biden was elected, after I thought, “Perhaps it doesn’t matter anymore. Perhaps they’re not well timed essays.” However, alas, in some ways they mirror our present conversations about motherhood and reproductive justice, simply as a lot as they did in 2016 and 2017 after I wrote them.

HMM: I actually appreciated the way you wrote in direction of the top of the e book, “I spotted that as a lot as I liked being there, collaborating in what I believed was my evolutionary, animal self, I additionally needed to be some place else—and I didn’t know what to do with that pressure.” Other than writing these essays, how have you ever grappled with that pressure in another way over time as a author?

JC: Since writing these essays I’ve come to know how seasonal creativity and artistic observe might be, and I’ve accepted that greater than after I was an early mom and youthful. There are moments in life when we now have a whole lot of time after we can commit giant chunks of time to inventive observe, and there’s additionally time after we’re germinating concepts. So we would not be writing as a lot, however we’re nonetheless pondering, or, in my case, through the pandemic, after I had youngsters dwelling with me all day, I didn’t do any writing. I cooked inventive meals and I gardened, and people had been my inventive practices for a season of life. So I’ve come to be extra versatile, understanding of these seasons and patterns.

this e book now although, I acknowledge how tense early motherhood might be, as a result of early motherhood is so demanding by way of time. You’re typically sleep disadvantaged, and youngsters require a whole lot of you. And now my youngsters are 8 and 12 they usually come dwelling from college and my son’s exterior enjoying with neighbors and my daughter’s studying a e book, and I all of the sudden have a few hours for pondering, the place they don’t want me. And that’s scrumptious and never one thing I might have predicted after I was writing a whole lot of these essays. All through my life, if I don’t have time to commit to a inventive observe, I really feel that loss very viscerally. I feel it’s vital for individuals with inventive temperaments to search out methods to nurture that, even within the small methods you possibly can when you will have a whole lot of different expectations and tasks.

HMM: That is form of a tangential query to the e book, however are you writing about how motherhood appears totally different now, now that you’ve got extra time to breathe and suppose?

JC: I haven’t however that’s fascinating. That may be an fascinating factor to discover.

HMM: It will give different writers some hope. Issues will ultimately get higher.

JC: They are going to, they may.

HMM: I actually appreciated that all through the e book you handle these hopeless moments, particularly within the first weeks, if you’re like, when was the final time that I slept longer than two hours in a row? For therefore lengthy, speaking concerning the tough components of being a mom, and being a girl, have been thought-about taboo. Why do you suppose that’s?

JC: I want I knew.

HMM: It’s just like the million greenback query.

JC: I feel culturally, there’s such robust messaging about what the best mom is meant to be or seem like. I don’t know if it’s as a result of our tradition proper now could be so individualist and centered on particular person households somewhat than the communal expertise, however we put a lot strain on moms. Then we now have non secular icons. Having grown up Catholic, I grew up with the Virgin Mary because the icon of good motherhood and one thing that moms had been alleged to attempt for.

Though it was unattainable to truly grow to be that particular person, we choose moms for the moments once they can’t meet these beliefs. I don’t know why that judgement is so robust proper now, and why there are such a lot of robust idealistic icons of moms throughout cultures, and but there are. And that creates an surroundings the place moms can battle—I actually did, making an attempt to know who I used to be and what it meant to be a mom, and the methods wherein I used to be not failing my youngsters even when I did fail to fulfill these very particular cultural beliefs and messages that I’d grown up with and had been round me.

HMM: Did writing concerning the expertise of changing into a mom, and particularly throughout your second, unintended being pregnant, enable you to grapple with it?

JC: Completely. Once I take a look at this e book, it’s a e book about seeing these cultural messages after which dismantling them, making an attempt to uncover what motherhood is perhaps, separate from all of these beliefs and messages, and to reclaim it. And writing these essays actually did assist me see these cultural messages that I used to be responding to with out being aware of it—and but judging myself with out realizing why I used to be judging myself. It undoubtedly helped me establish and develop a more healthy relationship with myself as a mom and with these messages.

HMM: Are you stunned to have written so many essays, this entire e book, about motherhood?

JC: I feel so. I used to be educated as an environmental author. That’s what I needed to be. Motherhood simply sort of got here at me sideways. As soon as I grew to become a mom I all of the sudden had all of those questions on motherhood, and located I couldn’t write about different matters. I wanted to deal with the questions I had about motherhood, via the lenses that I used within the e book.

HMM: I liked the way you explored energy and privilege and management all through this e book. How did placing collectively these essays form how you consider and write about management and privilege?

JC: The e book as a complete supplied an area for me to untangle what it means to have management or alternative, particularly reproductive management. Once I had my youngsters, particularly my second, the other ways we now have—or ought to have—management or alternative, acquired all knotted collectively. We regularly consider management or alternative as a chance for empowerment and autonomy, however then what occurs if you lose management or alternative, particularly when that loss is being imposed on you by a authorities or social establishments? After which there are additionally moments in life the place we are going to simply by no means have management, proper? Life is all the time going to offer us surprising challenges. Believing that we will all the time have alternative and management over the path our life takes—that’s simply by no means going to occur, and we’re going to undergo loads if we imagine that it’s going to. And but there are additionally moments in life the place giving up management is a sort of submission that’s empowering. I noticed that in my expertise of childbirth.

And but I couldn’t separate these concepts of alternative and management, and I wanted to know the place my expertise of motherhood was empowering, the place was it disempowering, the place had I had alternative, the place had I misplaced that alternative—and the way did it assist me higher perceive how generally to let go of management can be extra wholesome than making an attempt to cling to it. So the e book gave me a chance to discover and hopefully draw these questions out for others to know as nicely.

HMM: I feel you undoubtedly completed that, as least for me as a reader. You used the picture of the knot—you had been untangling a knot but it surely wasn’t totally loosened on the finish, however you possibly can see the totally different threads which are there and will by no means come undone. Shifting gears a bit of bit, one of many essays is about looking for neighborhood on-line, and this want for neighborhood is threaded via the e book. I admire that you simply write about how on-line and different communities are generally actually life-giving, and different occasions nervousness producing. What was the phrase for individuals who go to parks —

JC: Stroller stalking!

HMM: Sure! I liked studying that that was an precise factor that new moms do to attach with different new mothers. The place do you search out neighborhood with different moms and different writers?

JC: For me, since I’d gone to grad college earlier than I went to grad college, I had a neighborhood of writers already. As soon as I grew to become a mom, it wasn’t the neighborhood of writers that I lacked, it was a neighborhood of moms, and that was harder to ascertain or discover, particularly working in academia the place individuals have a tendency to maneuver round loads.

I’ve lived in central Arkansas for over ten years now so slowly I’ve been capable of construct that neighborhood with different dad and mom via daycares, different dad and mom who work on the college, youngsters birthday events, volunteering across the neighborhood. And now I’m at some extent the place I’m making an attempt to develop that neighborhood of writers once more. One of many presents of getting this e book out is with the ability to join with different writers who’ve written about motherhood within the final 12 months or two, and that’s been actually beautiful.

HMM: I really like that. It’s laborious to determine how one can join with different writers in a means that’s going to serve you within the second.

JC: Yeah, and after I had my youngsters a whole lot of my writing community was manufactured from writers on the similar stage of their profession as me, however lots of them didn’t have youngsters but, so there was this disconnect at the moment, so I couldn’t depend on the identical neighborhood to serve each wants. Discovering methods to develop your communities and networks the best way you have to—I feel it’s simply an ongoing process of maturity, however it may be laborious.

HMM: Sure! It’s an ongoing process! So, now I wish to speak concerning the varieties totally different varieties the essays took. I liked that some had a really narrative kind, others performed on different varieties. Are you able to share a bit of bit about how one or two of them took the shape they did? Do you experiment with kind? What conjures up you to take action?

JC: That was a purposeful a part of the challenge for me, really. I needed to make use of this assortment to push myself as a author and discover ways to develop essays in varieties that I hadn’t had a whole lot of expertise with. So it gave me a chance to experiment with new methods to strategy writing inventive nonfiction. Among the content material was fairly heavy, and but I discovered that if I might frequently experiment with new methods of writing the essay, it made the method really feel playful and enjoyable, even when it additionally required me to delve into reminiscences that had been generally heavy to take a seat with.

Two of the essays that come to thoughts instantly if you ask that query: The primary one is “A Price Accounting of Delivery,” which was my try at an abecedarian. So, A, B, C—the shape goes via the alphabet. This wasn’t fairly an abecedarian as a result of I don’t have an A or a Z or a Y, and there are two Ds, for example, so I needed to shift that sample to let the essay be what it needed to be, however that was a enjoyable one to put in writing as a result of I had all of this analysis about evolutionary biology, and I all the time needed to do an abecedarian. I actually loved seeing what that kind would let me do with the fabric.

And the opposite one is the final essay, which is known as “Extra Ideas on Management.” That one’s impressed by John Paul Lederach referred to as “Introduction Manifesto.” He calls it a “Wittgensteinian essay” and his essay is 100 brief fragments and are numbered. My essay isn’t numbered, however I assumed what he did with that kind was actually stunning. I had all of those traces and pictures that I needed to place into the e book about management, however I didn’t know how one can do it. So I assumed, “I’m going to see what I can do with this manner.” It was a whole lot of enjoyable to play.

HMM: I seen that there have been some experiences that you simply wrote about repeatedly, however as a result of they had been in several varieties or from totally different views, you had been actually capable of discover the emotional complexity of these experiences. It was actually highly effective.

JC: For me it helped, as a practitioner, it was helpful to discover what totally different varieties can do for an essay. And for readers, it’s a e book about early motherhood, and but there’s sufficient selection in varieties that it doesn’t really feel prefer it’s changing into redundant. So it retains the subject material recent.

HMM: It’s very textured, there are a number of layers. So most of the essays had been revealed elsewhere first, proper?

JC: Sure.

HMM: Did it’s important to, or select to, do any vital edits to any of the essays in placing collectively this e book?

JC: I didn’t, really. My editor had a few feedback right here and there for clarification. The one vital revision that the editor urged was to alter the order of 1 essay. Within the manuscript I had submitted, I had the essay “Message for the Animal Mom” on the very finish as a result of it was the final essay I wrote, and he or she stated, “No, I feel we have to transfer this up and let or not it’s a prologue.” And that made instant sense to me.

HMM: It instantly will get at most of the themes you deal with. So, after getting one thing to be learn by somebody, who’s your first reader?

JC: I’m a reasonably personal particular person, really, so I’m fairly sluggish to share work with others. I often undergo one to 2 revisions the place I’m the one reader. However then as soon as it will get to the purpose the place I actually need one other particular person’s suggestions or a way of whether or not what I’m making an attempt to do with an essay is working, I’ve two to a few writing associates that I’ve been exchanging work with for some time, and I’ll select certainly one of them primarily based on their availability, and see in the event that they’re keen to have a look. So, yeah, I maintain issues shut for some time after which slowly share it. I’m not somebody who shares early drafts shortly.

HMM: Is there anything I’ve requested you about that you simply’ll like to speak about or share?

JC: One of many issues that I thought of loads with this e book is viewers. I feel individuals typically assume that one thing about early motherhood specifically will solely be of curiosity to moms or girls. As I used to be writing the e book, I didn’t consider the viewers as solely girls or solely moms. I needed the essays to have the capability to have interaction and compel readers who may select by no means to grow to be moms, or males, or younger adults, or older adults, and to border motherhood and the problems and insurance policies that have an effect on motherhood as a problem that impacts us all. That was a aim of mine from the beginning. My hope is that it may possibly attain a broad viewers, and the writing and the totally different types of essays can compel extra than simply moms—although I do know it’s going to particularly communicate to moms with younger youngsters, and that’s additionally a beautiful factor.