Other People’s Mothers by Julie Marie Wade is a coming-of-age memoir that explores the relationship between a daughter, her mother, and the other mothers present in their lives, revealing a young woman grappling with complex messages about who she is permitted—or destined—to become.
We asked Julie Marie Wade some questions about her new book, which we’re sharing below.
When did you know that you wanted to write this book?
When I was a PhD student working on a creative nonfiction dissertation at the University of Louisville, I found myself writing about the imaginary family I created in my childhood, particularly the siblings I invented to keep me company as an only child and to help me understand the parents we shared. Who did I draw from to create those siblings? It was clearly the siblings of my friends, the kids I went to school with, the kids who lived nearby. I didn’t know anyone in my youth who didn’t have at least one brother or sister. But then there was this moment where I realized I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a mother either, unlike so many fairy tales and films where the child-protagonist is an orphan. All of those mothers, the mothers of my friends and their siblings, the mothers in the school pick-up lot, the mothers who lived nearby, were so incredibly vivid to me still, even in my early thirties as this idea was beginning to take hold. A whole mural of mothers came alive in my mind, and I realized I wanted to write about those mothers—real mothers who belonged to other children, whose mothering I witnessed and sometimes vicariously received. There was so much to say that I knew I would have to write this project as a whole separate book.
You’ve written other memoirs that explore childhood and coming of age. What makes this one different/unique?
All of my books of creative nonfiction so far have been written in a lyric essay style, by which I mean they tend to rely on techniques more closely associated with poetry (braiding, recursion, thematic connection-making, extended meditation on a single image) than traditional prose. In Other People’s Mothers, I challenged myself to write in a more linear, narrative mode, using techniques more closely associated with fiction. Since my first genre love is poetry, I’m sure that influence is still present in this book in some ways, but I made a conscious choice to think of Other People’s Mothers as “autobiographical storytelling,” where each chapter focuses on a different mother who is not my own, and each chapter title is that mother’s name with a bracketed thematic synopsis of the story to follow, e.g. “Mrs. Mann [Or a Study of the Fates of Different Drummers]” at the start of the book and “Mrs. Williams [Or a Study of Postmodernism and the Many Ways That Walls Are Broken]” at the end of the book. These thematic synopses also give a hint of the speaker’s age at the time, growing in complexity as I move through childhood into adolescence and young adulthood.
Can you share an example of another mother’s influence on your life that stands out in your memory?
When I was small, I assumed that every girl grew into a woman who became a mother inevitably, automatically, like a foregone conclusion. But then I started to pay attention to the women in my life who weren’t mothers—my Aunt Linda, my Great Aunt Ruth—and realized clearly there was a matter of choice involved, or at least circumstances under which motherhood might not happen. I was particularly fascinated by a friend’s mother who had five children and believed emphatically in motherhood as her calling and duty. I wrote about this family in Other People’s Mothers and how “go forth and multiply” was embraced in their home as a literal commandment. I think I admired Mrs. Arlington’s convictions, her sense of purpose and religious destiny in being a mother, and I wanted to discover what my own convictions were—what I couldn’t live without being or doing. It turns out for me that calling isn’t motherhood, but it’s being a writer and a teacher and living an out life with the woman I love. Sometimes the influences I’m exploring aren’t emulative possibilities so much as possibilities by analogy. Mrs. Arlington modeled for me a life that was absolutely dedicated to her values—and I want to live a life that reflects my dedication to mine.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
I hope readers will think about their relationship to all the mothers in their lives, past and present, not just their own mother or the mothers within their own family. I hope this book is an invitation to cast the memory net wide and discover what readers may have learned from the “other mothers” who surrounded them during their formative years. The idea of Mother, the trope of Mother, is so powerful and sometimes monolithic in nature, but when we look more closely, we realize how much variation and nuance there is in the lives of the mothers we’ve actually known, in how they approached motherhood, and beyond that, how they approached their lives as people who were mothers, yes, but also many other things at once. This book is a mosaic of mothers, but it’s really a mosaic of women whose relationship with their own maternity is complex and whose status as mother is only one facet of their fascinating identities. And that includes my own mother, too, who emerges in concert with, and often contradistinction to, the other mothers in this book.
What advice would you give your younger self about growing up?
It’s OK if you don’t see the life you’re looking for, a life that resonates with the person you are and the person you’re going to be represented in the lives around you as a child. Growing up isn’t the only way to grow. If you stay alert and attuned to your own heart as well as the world around you, there are so many possibilities you can grow into. And while it’s hard to understand just now, there are also some people and places and things that you will have to grow out of or away from in order to flourish. That’s OK, too.
Who are your favorite authors, and how have they influenced or informed your own work?
For the writing of childhood and adolescence in particular, I don’t think I’ve ever been touched more deeply by a memoir than Mark Doty’s Firebird. I remember how completely I identified with Child Mark, how perfectly Adult Mark placed me inside his memories as if I were living those experiences with and through him. The vividness of Doty’s writing was immersive, and I want my readers to feel immersed in my memories as well—not just watching a story play out but actually being inside that story. A few other memoirs that come to mind that immersed me completely, that made me feel deeply implicated in their authors’ coming of age, are A Cup of Water Under My Bed by Daisy Hernandez, If You Knew Then What I Know Now by Ryan Van Meter, The Rib Joint by Julia Koets, Butterfly Boy by Rigoberto Gonzalez, and I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well by James Allen Hall.
Do you have one sentence of advice for authors considering writing a memoir?
Writing memoir is akin to conjuring ghosts: inevitably, you bring back the past, summon it, dwell in it; you will need to listen closely to what the past has to say, even if it’s sometimes hard to hear; remember that all memoirists are at least a little bit haunted.
Learn more about Other People’s Mothers
Julie Marie Wade is the author of many collections of poetry and prose, including The Mary Years; Otherwise: Essays; and Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing. Wade is a winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir and grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She is professor of English and creative writing at Florida International University.
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