Elif Shafak is the most popular woman writer in Turkey today. In her lyrical and deeply-personal book, Black Milk, she writes of the struggle between art and motherhood.
Shafak tells of an imaginary “harem of small finger women” or tiny “Thumbelinas” who live within her and vie for dominance. All of her “finger women” are manifestations of different aspects of Shafak’s own personality struggling for control, as she wrestles with her decision to become a mother.
The book was written after the birth of Shafak’s first child and long bout of post-partum depression. In the book, Shafak examines her own feelings and career against those of Sylvia Plath, Zelda Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Ayn Rand, Simone de Beauvoir, and other female writers of note. Black Milk is original, humorous, and insightful – a must-read for all women who have ever felt the pull of more than one path.
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Elif Shafak Performs at The Moth: PEN World Voices
Elif Shafak tells a story on the them “What Went Wrong?” at The Moth at PEN World Voices, part of the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival.
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May 10, 2011
by Rafia Zakaria
Motherhood is often imagined as a natural state for women, a return to some authentic self that is believed to lie at the core of every woman. In patriarchal ...
