Bee Lavender

... An unflinching, beautifully written memoir of a childhood lost to illness...

Highly readable, fast-flowing account of a life of fighting off death - literally.... an extraordinary tale.

My next-to-favorite thing about Mamamphonic is the number of artisticcareers represented. There is a flamenco dancer, rock musicians, poets, and an illustrator who turned to making decorated cakes and cookies when her son was small. I loved reading about how to make a record label, and I loved Marrit Ingman's account of incorporating motherhood into her career as a film reviewer. This is my favorite thing about Mamahphonic: the adoration these women feel for their families, their joy (even on bad days) at the synthesis of motherhood and art.

Mamaphonic presents more than two dozen essays on what might be called the delicate balancing act of motherhood and artistic work, except that, as these contributors prove, the act is not so much delicate as it is messy, arduous, and absolutely essential.

Reading Mamaphonic is like being on a retreat with an enormously diverse and wise sisterhood of those who really understand punk rockers and dancers and researchers, cartoonists and cookie decorators, all pretty much in agreement: How do we do it? We don't know. To do it is difficult, but not to do it would be impossible.

By sharing their experiences and their stories, these creative women offer a gift to all mothers and mothers-to-be. And with that gift comes comfort and solace for those who may walk in their shoes creatively or otherwise.

The voices of mothers--the real in-the-trenches voices of mothers--always threaten the status quo. Tell the truth about your ambivalence, rage, and passion--whether about miscarriage, breast pumps, or (as profiled here) your welfare-avoidance job as a stripper--and watch the general public recoil. But as every mother knows, there is nothing more comforting than finding another woman who is willing to sit in your kitchen and share the honest-to-God truth about mothering. So it takes a lot of best-girlfriend loyalty to write the gut-wrenching motherhood stories that you'll find in Breeder. And fortunately, coeditors Bee Lavender and Ariel Gore had enough grit and pluck to get them published.

It is the quality of the writing that sets Hip Mama apart. This site ultimately provides succor to moms who cannot relate to our culture's mawkish notions of motherhood. Yet although it is cool and sometimes sharp, Hip Mama wears its heart on its Gerbers-stained sleeve, defining "hip" not just as " aware, informed" but also as "a place where young children sit when they're tired of walking."

Hipmama.com was, without a doubt, the only parenting site on the Web that marked the passing of Joey Ramone. It was probably alone, again, when it posted this headline: "Who says moms aren't hot?" Bee Lavender-- writer, activist, mother -- is definitely hot. She is the very embodiment of extreme motherhood.

Fun and irreverent.

No sanctified endorsement of the usual myths about motherhood here. No neat checklists of all-too-easy parenting solutions or slick write-ups of professional experts telling how it's supposed to be. Hip Mama speaks (and listens) to parents who want or need to raise kids their own way.... Hip Mama explores the real stuff of parenting with a proper recognition of the ambiguity of it all--and plenty of love and humanity.

Proof that being a mother doesn't have to be boring -- or apolitical.

Traditional or not, the topics are handled with serious insight.