By Erin Wood
Conway resident and UCA Creative Writing professor Jennifer Case’s book We Are Animals: Essays on the Nature and Politics of Motherhood will be published in September 2024 with Trinity University Press.
We Are Animals examines key moments in Case’s life where the conflicts between her identities of being a child-bearing mammal and a woman in twenty-first-century America (with one of the highest maternal death rates among developed countries in which one in every five women develops a mental health issue as a result of pregnancy) are brought into sharp relief. From the salve of parasocial interactions on baby forums to the intertwined history of industrial dairy farming and wearable breast pumps, Case explores an array of realities that give historical and cultural context to the experience of motherhood.
Case shares, “I want the essays to reach mothers like me, who have struggled in silence, but also anyone willing to look calmly, creatively, and critically at uncomfortable truths and problematic myths. It is less a motherhood memoir and more an exploration of reproductive justice and what it means to be a member of the human species. The challenges and injustices that contemporary mothers face will never be solved if only mothers are aware of them. To truly address the sexism and misogyny that can isolate today’s mothers and force them to internalize unrealistic expectations, we need to recognize these as social problems that affect us all.”
To join the preorder mailing list, visit jenniferlcase.com.
Hot Springs native, Erin Wood is a writer, editor, and publisher in Little Rock. She owns and runs www.etaliapress.com. Wood is author of “Women Make Arkansas: Conversations With 50 Creatives” (April 2019) and editor of and a contributor to “Scars: An Anthology” (2015).
