When I was a kid, within my family, we used to joke that my father had a “long lost brother.” Family lore had it that my grandmother left a baby on a doorstep. Though I understand that this cannot be anywhere near the full story of whatever my grandmother went through, to this day, I don’t know the details of her pregnancy. My grandmother died several years ago, before I could ask her about it.
Nearly every family has a hidden story like this— a mother or aunt or grandmother or great-grandmother who was forced or coerced into giving up a child, or who gave a child up of their own accord, to live their life on their own terms. Today, my podcast co-host Tracy Clark-Flory’s luminous and sharp memoir My Mother’s Daughter: Finding Myself in My Family’s Fractured Past is out. It’s a book that uncovers one such story, that of Tracy’s mother, who was sent away to a home for unwed mothers in the 1960s, forced to give up her daughter—Tracy’s sister—and subsequently institutionalized in the throes of her grief.
Excerpts of the book have already been featured at Cosmopolitan and The Guardian. Tracy also spoke about the story for The New York Times Modern Love podcast. Over at our podcast Dire Straights, she and I talked about the patriarchal trauma and shame we inherit from our mothers, as well as the critique of heterosexual institutions in the book.
You’ll get the bones of Tracy’s story from the links above, but the book itself is a far richer, deeper story than you can imagine. Since Tracy is my work wife and dear friend, I want you to order this book because I know she has put her whole heart into it. But this is a trenchant and timely feminist memoir about motherhood, daughterhood, reproductive control, racism, and healing from generational trauma that I would urge you to pick up right now, regardless.
It is also a book I will undoubtedly incorporate into my teaching, because it’s such a perfect example of a braided memoir done right. Tracy invites her readers to unravel her hidden family narrative right alongside her, as she deftly incorporates feminist theory and the history of homes for unwed mothers. The result is a propulsive, intimate read that illuminates the closeted truths embedded in what we call “family” today—as well as the power of opening ourselves to the expansive, myriad connections we all share with one another.
What is something you are mad about right now?
I’m mad that my book feels so relevant and timely, even though so much of it is about events that happened in the sixties. As we’ve talked about at Dire Straights, the Heritage Foundation this year released a report on “saving the American family,” which can really just be summarized as policy proposals for strong-arming women into marriage. Just recently, an article came out about women who are being sent to contemporary maternity homes and coerced into adoption, through everything from religious rhetoric to the promise of a full college scholarship.
That’s to say nothing of connections we can draw to murderous ICE raids, which are tearing apart families. The state is controlling which families are rewarded and allowed to stay together, and which families are punished and fractured. These are similar dynamics as with homes for unwed mothers in the pre-Roe era. So many of the beliefs and agendas that my mom and sister faced back in 1965 are very much alive.
Also, as an author publishing a book, I’m mad about just how beholden writers are to platforms, like this one, which has decided to platform Andr** T**e. But also: Instagram and TikTok, which are not only destroying our attention spans for reading books, but also turning book promotion into a silly and uncertain algorithmic game.
What “feelings rules” did you learn growing up? What did those lessons teach you about gender, relationships, and the world?
One of the “feelings rules” I intuited early on was that mine was a happy family, a lucky family, and therefore I should be happy. I now understand that so much of that came from the fact that my mom had relinquished her baby for adoption two decades before I was born. She was devoted to giving me what she couldn’t give her first child. I didn’t know about my sister for most of my childhood, but I saw the intensity of my mom’s doubled care. I knew what my happiness meant to her—and I felt pressure to perform it.
These lessons carried over into my approach to sexual and romantic relationships with men. Does it suffice to say that my first memoir was titled Want Me? I channeled my own wants into being wanted, partly because that was my broader socialization in this culture. In writing My Mother’s Daughter, though, I came to see that it was also my socialization within my little nuclear family unit. I felt the pressure to perform the role of the happy child, but I also felt my mom’s longing for her lost child. I felt I was never enough—and, of course, I wasn’t! No one could possibly compensate for such a loss.
I also learned from watching how my mom handled her own emotions that difficult feelings were to be tamped down. You contain and control them. Also, probably, you should blame yourself a little bit—or a lot—for them. That is all very clearly the legacy of her trauma. She never fully grieved or processed it. Instead, she boxed it up as a survival strategy.
What is your relationship now to feeling/emotion? What feelings scare you most? Which emotions do you find most powerful? Do you like feeling things?
I used to worry about being overtaken by my emotions, especially sadness. Like if I allowed myself to go there I would never be able to return. That’s another emotional legacy that I recognize from my mom. After the adoption, she was committed to a mental institution in her grief. Again, her trauma was never healed, she just learned to box it up so that it didn’t overtake her again. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I came of age worrying about my own capacity for “madness.”
All that said, I grew up in a very therapy-positive household and I’ve done many years of therapy across my adult life—but it’s very possible to approach therapy as a way of managing and avoiding emotions. As my former therapist once told me: “Intellectualizing is a high level defense.” I’ll never forget that one!
For most of my life, I was very good at suppressing tears. Motherhood changed that for me. My feelings started to live closer to the surface. I can no longer hold back tears. At first, it felt like bodily betrayal—tears that I couldn’t control! But I’ve come to see this as a gift, even when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable. This inability to hide is a potential source of connection with friends and family.
Since writing this book, and making a connection between my mom’s experience and my fears about feelings, I’ve gotten much more comfortable with releasing myself into emotions, including sadness.
Do you think of your creative process as related to a state of madness? Some other way?
Oh yeah, for sure. I love that madness. I miss the altered state that was writing this book, and I grieve it now! I was absolutely overtaken by obsessive research into my mom’s past. History books piled up on my desk. I started requesting old documents and emailing with librarians and record-keepers. While I was trying to track down some key information about both the maternity home and mental institution where my mom was sent, I really felt like a wild-eyed detective pinning up photos and connecting a red string on a bulletin board.
I was making so many connections between my mom’s life, my life, and the culture at large. I felt like an astrophysicist on the verge of solving the secrets of the universe. We have these moments of grandiosity, right? And it is so very intoxicating—and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. I wasn’t actually solving the secrets of the universe, but I was performing meaningful work, and we absolutely should enjoy the hell out of that process of connection and creation.
I miss the disorientation of slamming the laptop shut and dashing out the door to get my kid from school—wearing who knows what, my bun askew—and feeling like I’ve just traveled from an alternate dimension, like I’m an alien species masquerading as a human parent at pickup. I suppose I still have that sensation, only now I’m not coming from my book-writing planet. Instead, I’m traveling from the black hole of “I just spent three hours filming TikToks about my book that I really hope will go viral.” I do not enjoy that state of madness as much.
What is your relationship to diagnosis?
I’ve been diagnosed with depression and anxiety in the past—and when I think about diagnosis I actually think about the relief of a label, even when it’s a “bad” one. “I am [blank]. It’s official. This explains everything.” There’s a black-and-white clarity to it. When you’re afraid of emotions, there can be some pleasure in finally submitting to them. But that black-and-white quality of diagnosis can also add to the fear of feelings. It can be a trap, too.
Also, diagnosis suggests “treatment,” which is now making me think of the popularity of the medical drama The Pitt, which has been widely attributed to the idea of “competency porn.” In other words, the doctors on the show are good at what they do and that comes as a relief to viewers in the midst of the utter incompetency all around us right now, especially at the highest levels of government. But I think the fantasy of diagnosis, specifically, has been underrated in the discourse.
There is so very much that is wrong with all of us—not because we are ill but because we live in a sick world. But wouldn’t it be nice to be laid up on a gurney with Dr. Robby reviewing your chart, delivering his expert opinion, and suggesting a straightforward course of treatment? Like maybe all you need is a course of antibiotics. That’s a much simpler prescription than, oh, I don’t know, needing to overthrow white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
So, diagnose me, Daddy.
If you had to diagnose yourself with something, what would it be?
I gotta bring it back to my former therapist and say: Intellectualizer. It’s something I’m working on—feeling feelings instead of mentally wrangling them, letting go of control, getting comfortable with uncertainty.
Have you ever felt normal, healthy, or healed? Why or why not? What is your relationship to these concepts?
I write in my book about how my mom told me that she felt “unusual for a woman,” because of the intensity of her interest in sex. I was in my twenties when she said that and I remember thinking at the time, Oh, that’s why I’m this way, because ever since middle-school I had felt that my “boy craziness” was unusual. At the time, I felt a surge of connection with her. Well, I’m not normal but at least I’m not normal with my mom.
Later on, I ended up becoming a journalist who covered the sex beat, which in a lot of ways only added to my sense of abnormality, because what kind of woman decides to cover that topic full-time? But my work also allowed me to have such remarkably candid conversations with people about their sex lives, which really exposed the lie of sexual “normalcy.” Variation was the norm, and so was people’s sense of being a weird little freak unlike everyone else.
Now, I don’t feel abnormal so much as totally riveted by desire in all its many forms and expressions.
How do art and culture make you feel? What are your favorite feelings to have when engaging with books or culture? What do you hope people feel when they engage with your work?
I love when early readers of My Mother’s Daughter tell me that my book has made them cry, which maybe has something to do with my own previous discomfort with tears! For me, when I cry while reading a book, it means I am fully present with the story. I’ve connected with it. I am along for the journey. To hear that people have had that experience with my book is everything to me.
My favorite feeling to have when engaging with books or culture is to be turned on—intellectually, creatively, or erotically. It’s that lit fire, the feeling of needing to act, write, make, move. It’s the feeling of being overtaken by someone else’s flow.
What is the relationship between politics and art for you, and in your work?
There is no separation. My entire career I’ve been working as a feminist writer and journalist. Some of my writing is explicitly political, but my personal writing is also always reaching for a larger cultural critique—often, one that is informed by feminist scholarship. Both of my memoirs have doubled as personal journeys and vehicles for feminist thought.
In Want Me I dove into everything from Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity to Jill Nagle’s concept of “compulsory virtue” as a means of making sense of my own experiences. My Mother’s Daughter weaves together my family’s story with feminist research, history, and cultural commentary to critique the control of women’s bodies and sexuality within patriarchy, and especially within the institution of marriage.
I don’t know how to separate the two.
Is there a question you are often asked in interviews that makes you angry or uncomfortable? What do you wish people would ask you instead?
With my first book, which was a sexual coming-of-age memoir, it was questions like: “Do you worry about your family reading this?” “How are you so brave?” It felt like the question was really: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
I don’t really wish that those folks would ask me a question. Instead, I wish they would reflect on what my work brought up for them. I’d prefer to ask them a question: How did this book stir up your own feelings of shame?
What is something keeping you sane right now?
Look, this is silly, but I am currently binging High Potential. It’s an ABC procedural dramedy with an absurd premise: Morgan—a single mom of three kids—has a very high IQ and an uncanny capacity for spotting patterns. She’s working as a cleaner at the LAPD offices—vacuuming underneath detectives’ desks and such—and is able to solve a crime because of her superhuman abilities. So they take her on a consultation to help crack cases.
It’s light, comedic, and highly unrealistic, but also just so charming and comforting. There’s also a spicy little just-below-the-surface attraction between Morgan and her partner Detective Karadec. I’m not determined enough to go look up some fanfic of those two, but if presented with it, I would read it.
When my package with TCF’s book arrived yesterday I was walking out the door with a book of essays by Toni Morrison in hand. I put down Morrison (please forgive me TM) and brought the new book instead. It was so hard to put down, I even read it while watering my yard with the other hand. Usually I expect to read a memoir once and pass it on, but the depth and nuance of this one… I don’t want to risk losing my copy by loaning it out.