Gerber revitalizes feminist theories of motherhood and creativity. She problematizes a feminist literary history that has tended to presume, under Woolf's dictum, that art only materialized with the assurance of solitude, time, and financial means, and shows her readers the inexorable advent and production of art in everyday life.

Fran Bartkowski, Rutgers University, Newark

Gerber's study is of crucial significance for feminist literary studies not only because it provides a rare examination of the role of class and race in determining women's experiences of motherhood and how such becomes represented in fiction, but also because it explains why, how, and in which ways the experience of motherhood at the margins of culture gives rise to a distinct literary tradition, that of the mother-artist narrative. Gerber describes and delineates the themes and features of this literary tradition and in so doing develops a rich and nuanced poetics of maternal creativity.

Andrea O'Reilly, Director, Centre for Research on Mothering, York University

A superb reader and elegant writer, Nancy Gerber names and examines the 'mother-artist,' a figure whom psychoanalytical theory cannot imagine and whom even feminist critics have neglected. The mother who is an artist in contemporary fiction is a working-class character-one who develops an 'aesthetic of the ordinary,' fashions political critique out of domestic metaphor, and sustains a rich interior life despite material poverty. Gerber shows how the mother-artist-whether a black domestic, white factory worker, Holocaust survivor, or Haitian immigrant-leaves a legacy of beauty and hope.

Cheryl A. Wall, Rutgers University, New Brunswick