We all house ghosts that wave at us when we least expect them. We all harbor grief that wears us down when we are least prepared to get up and move forward. We all co-exist with inner voices that gnaw at us when we are least ready to talk. We all do. But we don’t all find ways to write to and through the games those ghosts, grief, and gnawing can play.
Kate Zambreno has, and in Book of Mutter, Zambreno documents both process and pain alongside memory and the mundane. Zambreno’s mother is the text’s centerpiece, one of both expulsion and resurrection, exorcism and revisionism, and decades in the making. The work and its collection of fragments and memories penned as a sort of meditation is a masterpiece.
Zambreno has not only produced a method for making sense of the haunting longevity of grief but has also produced a work of uncategorizable possibility. Writing across and within genres– non-fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction, poetry, and prose, Zambreno defies classification and defines the power of writing as a tool to process and promote growth.
Written for a mother who persists at the intersection of memory, remembering, and a thirst for another tomorrow, Zambreno writes life into the page of Book of Mutter: “Over the decade I’ve attempted to sculpt this book. It’s not malleable enough.”
The work is of memory and moments. Of mothers and hung laundry. Of dirty laundry and unfamiliar habitats. Of homes and questions that haunt. The work traverses the uncanny ability of a mind to recreate, reimagine, and reconstruct history. Zambreno is honest about the flexibility and potential for fabrication when rummaging in memories or historical records. Zambreno is just as honest about the known pain of loss and the truth that grief haunts. The pieces shape, and are shaped of, the spiraling thoughts, journeys, and searches that so often accompany loss in layers of longing and asymmetrical ways of being. The pieces are as unique as the grieving process is personal and as unifying as grief is universal.
Threaded through the work is the story of Zambreno’s mother— her life, illness and ultimate passing. Other threads include that of Henry Darger and Louise Bourgeois. The threads offer a cohesive narrative and a reminder of the universality of questions of identity, grief, and memory especially when grounded in loving and longing. Zambreno writes with the confidence of a skilled memoirist, the lyricism of a potent poet, and the piercing intelligence and breadth of a well-read scholar. References fill the pages– from Lady Bird’s journal to Anne Carson’s essay on “The Gender of Sound” and from Virginia Woolf’s embrace of shadows to Mary Todd Lincoln’s bed during her stay in a sanatorium.
Combined with Zambreno’s generous wonderings, observations, and meditations, the work is just as likely to inspire research into the past, both personal and historical, as it is to make space for a fresh approach on the future – “Don’t look back or else you will be consumed”.
This book is for anyone who has looked back and been consumed. This book is also for anyone who comes from somewhere and from someone. Zambreno writes “towards” her mother and for everyone who has, had, or is (multiple tenses duly noted) a mother:“my mother my sworn enemy my first love”.
Just as grief gnaws long after a person’s passing, so too do the memories and the material in its many forms. Zambreno also penned Appendix Project– a companion text of lectures, talks, and essays which offer yet more to explore. No matter to what histories and to where the collection “meditations on grief cut up into fragments” takes you, dear reader, whether your childhood home, the cancelled Sweet Sixteen party of your own mother, or a mantle of collected women, the journey, with Zambreno’s powerful prose as your guide, will be well worth the time spent.
Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She loves words, experimental poetry, and the change of seasons. She’s also a fan of late nights, crossword puzzles, and compelling underdogs. She has authored several chapbooks and full-length poetry collections, with stories, poems, and essays published in a variety of literary and scholarly journals. Sample works include Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility, A Collection of Recollections, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups. She is currently working on her first series, which (not surprisingly) includes a novel in verse. She is the 2022-2023 Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate.