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Motherhood and Its Ghosts
A new narrative of motherhood, moving between of interior and exterior landscapes, woven of diaries, readings, and photographs. Iman Mersal intricately weaves a new narrative of motherhood, moving between interior and exterior landscapes, diaries, readings, and photographs to question old and current representations of motherhood and the related space of unconditional love, guilt, personal goals, and traditional expectations. What is hidden in narratives of motherhood in fictional and nonfictional texts as well as in photographs?
- GenresPoetryNonfictionFeminism
142 pages, Paperback
Published May 13, 2025
13 people are currently reading
686 people want to read
About the author
Iman Mersal
23 books92 followersIman Mersal is the author of four books of poems in Arabic: Ittisafat (Characterisations), 1990; Mamarr Mu‘tim Yasluh li Ta‘allum al-Raqs (A Dark Alley Suitable for Dance Lessons), 1995; al-Mashy Atwal Waqt Mumkin (Walking As Long As Possible), 1997; and Jughrafia Badila (Alternative Geography), 2006.
Mersal was born in 1966 in Mansoura, Egypt. She was an editor for the cultural and literary reviews Bint al-Ard and Adab wa Naqd in Egypt for several years before leaving for North America.
Mersal relocated to Boston, Massachussetts, USA in 1998 and from there to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where she now resides with her husband, the ethnomusicologist Michael Frishkopf, and their two sons. She works as assistant professor of Arabic literature at the University of Alberta. In 2005, she was the subject of Shabnam Sukhdev's Stranger in her Own Skin, a documentary film based on Mersal's poetry. Her current academic interests focus on questions of diasporic identities, which were central to her recently completed PhD thesis with Cairo University, The Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature.
Selected poems from Mersal’s ouevre have been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Italian. These Are Not Oranges, My Love, a selection of Mersal's work translated into English by Khaled Mattawa, was published by Sheep Meadow, New York in 2008.
Mersal was born in 1966 in Mansoura, Egypt. She was an editor for the cultural and literary reviews Bint al-Ard and Adab wa Naqd in Egypt for several years before leaving for North America.
Mersal relocated to Boston, Massachussetts, USA in 1998 and from there to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where she now resides with her husband, the ethnomusicologist Michael Frishkopf, and their two sons. She works as assistant professor of Arabic literature at the University of Alberta. In 2005, she was the subject of Shabnam Sukhdev's Stranger in her Own Skin, a documentary film based on Mersal's poetry. Her current academic interests focus on questions of diasporic identities, which were central to her recently completed PhD thesis with Cairo University, The Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature.
Selected poems from Mersal’s ouevre have been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Italian. These Are Not Oranges, My Love, a selection of Mersal's work translated into English by Khaled Mattawa, was published by Sheep Meadow, New York in 2008.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
August 6, 2022
"We are asked to witness an act of modesty and self-effacement on the part of each of these figures, but also to examine a picture of women's place in a patricharichal society, where she is inevitably figured as without an identity of her own, a mere passage, a vehicle of reproduction, a conduit between a man and his child."
June 20, 2025
kupila som si v po narocnom vybere v benatkach, docitala v oostende. cely cas pocas citania som sa kutikom oka pozerala na okolite matky a ich deti. velmi sa mi pacila knizka aj format aj tema, ozaj mi to sadlo.
October 25, 2021
probablemente uno de los libros más bonitos que he leído
August 25, 2025
How to Mend: Motherhood and It’s Ghosts is one of those books that grips you and sinks you into its affective registers. I consumed its tiny pages, craving more and more of Mersal’s insight as she speaks to thoughts and feelings that you perhaps haven’t engaged with because they are those things that aren’t normally articulated. One thing that
I think is common but not reckoned with, is that birth, the process and its aftermath, is the moment of a kind of death. It is transformative in many ways, a rupture in the history of a woman and her body, but it also signals the beginning of a life-long journey with guilt.
Mersal handles motherhood with such honesty through a critical and personal meditation. She denotes both the public and private layers of motherhood, conveying the pull of the dominant narrative that tinges everything we think and feel about motherhood, a limiting backdrop that depicts “a motherhood so clear it is invisible” (p92). What struck me is the continual tussle around separation and unity between the mother and child, but also the daily internal struggle where there is no prospect of overcoming or succeeding in motherhood. Mersal encapsulates it perfectly here:
“It is not just a juxtaposition between two elements with the mother-writer/writer-mother identity, it is a rending, a struggle over time and energy. When the writer manages to be a mother for a day she will feel like a failure for all the reading or writing she did not get done. When she has a day to herself she will be tormented by her selfishness.’ (p36)
Mending and motherhood isn’t really possible. Mersal explores this impossibility with her own diary entries and the struggle with her son’s mental ill health. Not only does Mersal offer an inquiry into the (in)articulated tensions within and around motherhood, she invites contemplative moments urging us to look to our own relations and how to perhaps make mending an ongoing pursuit, one that we handle generously with ourselves, our children and other mothers.
I think is common but not reckoned with, is that birth, the process and its aftermath, is the moment of a kind of death. It is transformative in many ways, a rupture in the history of a woman and her body, but it also signals the beginning of a life-long journey with guilt.
Mersal handles motherhood with such honesty through a critical and personal meditation. She denotes both the public and private layers of motherhood, conveying the pull of the dominant narrative that tinges everything we think and feel about motherhood, a limiting backdrop that depicts “a motherhood so clear it is invisible” (p92). What struck me is the continual tussle around separation and unity between the mother and child, but also the daily internal struggle where there is no prospect of overcoming or succeeding in motherhood. Mersal encapsulates it perfectly here:
“It is not just a juxtaposition between two elements with the mother-writer/writer-mother identity, it is a rending, a struggle over time and energy. When the writer manages to be a mother for a day she will feel like a failure for all the reading or writing she did not get done. When she has a day to herself she will be tormented by her selfishness.’ (p36)
Mending and motherhood isn’t really possible. Mersal explores this impossibility with her own diary entries and the struggle with her son’s mental ill health. Not only does Mersal offer an inquiry into the (in)articulated tensions within and around motherhood, she invites contemplative moments urging us to look to our own relations and how to perhaps make mending an ongoing pursuit, one that we handle generously with ourselves, our children and other mothers.
April 13, 2022
من اجمل ماقرأت بحياتي
June 15, 2025
I think I loved this book more than I should, which is my specialty. I liked the genre of this book; it was non fiction, but it blended opinion essays and the author's life experiences with examples through photography and poetry. She discusses both the common and uncommon narratives of being a mother, how women can lose their sense of self after becoming a mom, and how some try to rediscover themselves in the process. I enjoyed reading this book, even though I’m not a mother or feeling an urgent call to become one, but I loved the philosophical reflections and the poetic, introspective narrative.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 3, 2025
Meditative, dream like at times, academic at others. The honest lens toward internal conflict of maternal ambivalence is palpable, relatable, subversive, necessary. A good read for those interested in exploring how we perceive and represent our interior lives?
March 25, 2024
“Biologically speaking, the fetus is an alien body within the body of the mother, a parasitic creature, and its presence inside her has the potential to infect her with a number of diseases; it might also be the cause of her death before, during, or after birth.
We cannot expect this conflict, taking place on the biological level, to be wholly absent from the postpartum relationship between mother and child.”
The book is split into parts where you start losing what exactly is it meant to be: research project, biography, or a diary. Here’s the thing: you don’t need to know.
It flows and ebbs into you as it takes you on reflective journeys, historical ones, introduces you to a concept of motherhood hidden from the outside. The connection that cannot be severed.
Following Barthes a step further I would suggest that, as you look at an image of yours, an image of motherhood that concerns you personally, you are neither operator nor spectator, you are not the child in the photograph nor the mother that holds the child on her lap. You are the relationship that links you both, the relationship that is erased or hidden or even excluded from the picture itself.
Definitely my favorite writer now.
We cannot expect this conflict, taking place on the biological level, to be wholly absent from the postpartum relationship between mother and child.”
The book is split into parts where you start losing what exactly is it meant to be: research project, biography, or a diary. Here’s the thing: you don’t need to know.
It flows and ebbs into you as it takes you on reflective journeys, historical ones, introduces you to a concept of motherhood hidden from the outside. The connection that cannot be severed.
Following Barthes a step further I would suggest that, as you look at an image of yours, an image of motherhood that concerns you personally, you are neither operator nor spectator, you are not the child in the photograph nor the mother that holds the child on her lap. You are the relationship that links you both, the relationship that is erased or hidden or even excluded from the picture itself.
Definitely my favorite writer now.
February 11, 2024
This book brought me to tears so many times. Beautiful.
"My mother remained more present to me in her possessions. If I'd been more aware and someone had asked me about "my mother's picture," I would have shown them the bird she'd stitched onto the canvas herself. It is not aesthetic vision or skill that summons my mother's presence in this canvas, but the slight punctum that the bird gives me. I get nothing of this sort from our studio portrait. The bird's eyes are always looking at me, as though they belong to her. The bird. Motionless. For whose sake my mother sat and stitched by the window where the light came in, each pinprick a symbolic laceration in the process of its embodiment: cuts by the hundred to make it whole."
"My mother remained more present to me in her possessions. If I'd been more aware and someone had asked me about "my mother's picture," I would have shown them the bird she'd stitched onto the canvas herself. It is not aesthetic vision or skill that summons my mother's presence in this canvas, but the slight punctum that the bird gives me. I get nothing of this sort from our studio portrait. The bird's eyes are always looking at me, as though they belong to her. The bird. Motionless. For whose sake my mother sat and stitched by the window where the light came in, each pinprick a symbolic laceration in the process of its embodiment: cuts by the hundred to make it whole."
August 18, 2021
Absolutely loved this book, a beautiful exploration of the power of poetry, photography, and storytelling in capturing the complexities of motherhood. Especially loved the exploration of the deep diaspora experienced by an immigrant woman embarking on motherhood alone, as well as the pain and mourning that comes with motherhood. Beautifully tragic, her journey as a mother is a testament to the depths of a mother's love. An absolute piece of art cannot wait to read her other works!!
October 6, 2024
I love the artistic vision of Iman and her rich life experience. I relate to her details on Egyptian motherhood.
the duality of her writing makes it difficult to enjoy it in either language, to clarify, I found the sentence structures foreign to Arabic to an extent where you feel it is a translation of the original work rather than the original work, I looked up the English translation to find a smoother structure but I missed the authenticity of her Egyptian references.
the duality of her writing makes it difficult to enjoy it in either language, to clarify, I found the sentence structures foreign to Arabic to an extent where you feel it is a translation of the original work rather than the original work, I looked up the English translation to find a smoother structure but I missed the authenticity of her Egyptian references.
May 13, 2021
This is between poetry and narrative and theory, woven around the elusive image of what it means to be a mother, even when that only exists in a single photograph. I enjoyed the references to Arabic stories and poems and nursery rhymes, which I had no prior reference for. The narrative that builds at the end, of the mental illness of the narrator's son, is as heart-wrenching as it is hopeful.
Read
June 2, 2025Lovely and lyrical and engaged with questions I have been thinking about (childlessly) for a long time. Also full of brilliant references I have begun trying to track down starting with Elizabeth Costello. I'm very glad I read this.
December 20, 2024
” إذا رأيت هذه الصورة ضمن أرشيف من الصور، وأنت لا تعرف أي سرد حولها، قد تتخيّل أماً وابنتها أمام سور بيتهما الأنيق، صورة عادية تنتمي لصور المتن العام، للأمومة الواضحة إلى درجة كونها غير مرئية.“
August 15, 2025
كتاب عظيم، مثير للاهتمام، مسلي و حميمي جدا جدا انا مفتكرش شهقت - من الاستيعاب المفاجئ- او دمعت بالشكل ده من زمان .
September 12, 2025
من أجمل الكتب ايمان مرسال بتحاول تشرح الأمومة أنها مو مثالية أو خالية من الصراع هي تجربة تتضمن الإيثار والذنب التوتر بين الذات والآخر والعيش بين لحظات الاتصال والانفصال
وليس مجرد حب بلا حدود
وليس مجرد حب بلا حدود
October 17, 2025
Sad and real meditation on motherhood & death. Relatable shit
October 17, 2025
Prachtig!!!
October 19, 2025
Tolle Mischung aus theoretischen Gedankenansätzen zum Mutter/Kind Sein und persönliche Geschichte.
March 24, 2025
A book in many forms - Iman Mersal explores motherhood through personal reflection, archival analysis, fairytale, and journal entries. Mersal also is exploring the act of being a mother and also her history with her own mother. A really interesting dive into motherhood that made me feel equal parts more excited and more scared of becoming a mother myself. Thank you to Transit Books for this galley and I look forward to it's publication on May 13th.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews