The Baby On The Fire Escape Creativity Motherhood And The Mindbaby Problem Julie Phillips by Julie Phillips 9780393635157, 0393635155 instant download after payment.

 With fierce empathy, Phillips evokes the intimate & varied struggles of brilliant artists & writers of the twentieth century. Ursula K. Le Guin found productive stability in family life, & Audre Lorde’s queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms. Susan Sontag became a mother at nineteen, Angela Carter at forty-three. These mothers had one child, or five, or seven. They worked in a studio, in the kitchen, in the car, on the bed, at a desk, with a baby carrier beside them. They faced judgement for pursuing their creative work—Doris Lessing was said to have abandoned her children, & Alice Neel’s in-laws falsely claimed that she once, to finish a painting, left her baby on the fire escape of her New York apartment. 

As she threads together vivid portraits of these pathbreaking women, Phillips argues that creative motherhood is a question of keeping the baby on that apocryphal fire escape: work & care held in a constantly renegotiated, provisional, productive tension. A meditation on maternal identity & artistic greatness, The Baby on the Fire Escape illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary life.