Nine books about women without children

Nicole Louie is a writer and translator based in Ireland. Her essays have appeared in Oh Reader Magazine, The Walrus, and The Guardian and her curated collections of books, movies and podcasts about women who are not mothers by choice, circumstance or ambivalence can be found on Instagram: @bynicolelouie.

Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children is her first book.

At Electric Lit Louie tagged nine favorite books "by women who placed writing, not babies, at the center of their lives and flourished outside of motherhood." One title on the list:

Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir by Amy Tan

By uncovering seven plastic boxes of family memorabilia in the corner of her office, Amy Tan goes deep into her traumatic childhood, reflects on her Chinese heritage, and offers insights into the nature of creativity and her writing methods. Where the Past Begins is a poignant and humorous memoir that recounts Tan’s complex relationship with her mentally ill mother, the loss of both her 16-year-old brother and her father within months of each other, and examines her love for art, music, and linguistics.

Old letters to and from her mother, some dating from 1969, when Tan went to college and they separated for the first time, give further insight into a relationship marked by frequent emotional fights and declarations of love. Sunk deep into the material evidence of their mother-daughter bond, Tan shares her feelings about becoming a mother herself, expressing no desire to pass along her genetic structure by stating, “What’s in me that I’d have wanted to pass on is already in the books.”

Read about the other entries on the list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue