Mother's Day

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Description

Mother's Day – Song of a Sad Mother

Mother ruled over life and death. Over life and death of my dolls. They're only dolls. They're not living things. And if they were. You mustn't rely on others. When I came home on my first day of school, they were gone. There was a smell of burning in the house. You don’t need them any more. I took away the ashes.


Maria-Maria had broken away from her domineering mother long before her physical death, or at least she thought she had. Neither mother’s cruel lashings nor her cutting criticism had prevented her from rejecting the values and ideals that her authoritarian and Communist party-line- towing parents held so dearly. To their crushing dismay, she would not deploy her artistic talents toward embodying the Ceaucescian model of the “new human.” Quite the contrary, she was going to revel in being imperfect, and embark on a journey of self-exploration in order to discover what it means to be a self that is not defined by being her mother’s daughter or a mother to her own daughter. Putting everything at stake to detach from the primal bond that both oppresses and eludes her, Maria-Maria opens herself up to, and achieves, the unexpected.

Maria-Maria revisits her experiences. The experiences from her previous life. From a distance. From a different perspective. Lifts herself up with them. Accepts them. Falls in love with them.


The original German edition was published in 2007 by ROTBUCH Publishing co.


Voices about Carmen-Francesca Banciu and Mother's Day


"Astonishly sovereign, Banciu, with her ideological wimmelbook, succeeds in a pleasantly vivid style to integrate her family and socialism history together."

– Hendrik Werner, Die Welt


"Mother’s Day – Song of the Sad Mother is an artistically compelling book that impressively describes life in the crumple zone between ideology and defective traditions."

– Judith Leister, Neue Zürcher Zeitung


"Banciu explores an uncompromising struggle for selfhood in a singular voice that is vulnerable and authentic, emotional, and unsparingly honest. Beyond a literary study of the complex dynamics that inextricably bind and repel mothers and daughters, Banciu’s "Mother’s Day - Song of a Sad Mother " is a courageous reflection on what it means to become and accept one’s self with all of the renunciations and rewards that this fraught journey entails."

Elena Mancini


Further Information

Author Carmen-Francesca Banciu

Reading Sample

VIMEO

Additional product information

Pages:
227
Cover:
Softcover with flaps
Measures:
21 x 12,5 cm
Language:
English, translated from German by Zoe Annamaria Hawkins
Published:
September 2015
ISBN:
978-3-941524-47-7