All About Our Mothers

This afternoon reading group meeting explores mother/child relationships and the transmission of intergenerational feeling states. It centres on Carolyn Steedman’s Landscape of a Good Woman, the 1986 feminist classic of autoethnography and psycho-social history.

Other readings foregrounding dynamics of class mobility and education, maternal frustration, childhood ambivalence and shame include selections from:

- Didier Eribon, Returning to Reims (2009, English translation 2013)

- Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments: A Memoir (1987)

- Lee Chia-ying (李佳穎), A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven (2024)

Together will read out loud from selected texts, which will be sent to participants in advance; no advance preparation is needed.

Access at the Women's Art Library, Goldsmiths Special Collections

Feminist Duration Reading Group Auto Programme

This session is led by Rachel Garfield, Helena Reckitt and Norah Tsai as part the Feminist Duration Reading Group’s ‘Auto’ programme exploring recent life writing, auto-theory, and biographically-informed fiction.  For further information visit the FDRG website.

Opening Up the Family Album

‘All About Our Mothers’ accompanies the workshop 'Opening Up the Family Album' led by feminist artist and psychotherapist Rosy Martin. Using skills of therapy and co-counselling, the workshop explores family photographs as the catalyst for investigating forgotten and buried memories. To request a place on the Workshop send an Expression of Interest [250 word max] by 1 September to feministduration@gmail.com. Please note that places are limited. We will confirm participation by 5pm Wednesday 3 September.

Image from the cover of Vivian Gornick's Fierce Attachments: A Memoir (1987).