recently read: matrescence
35: and we the animals by justin torres
Knowing what book someone is reading and what parts they resonate with most can be so intimate. It reveals their interests, where their head is at, and what excerpts are so significant that they will mark up a page because they think it’s worth revisiting at a later time. I’m fascinated by what books others gravitate towards and I find that it helps me get to know them better and gives me a small glimpse into who they are at their core. No one asked for these book reviews, but maybe it’s my way of showing who I am and what I’m interested in – beyond the clothes, the products, and my career. Or at the very least, encourage some to look up from their phones and instead towards the pages of a good book.
Book no. 4 of 2025
So many pages dog-eared, so many excerpts underlined — many more than I could share below.
A must read for ALL — for those who want to become parents (yes — that means dads, too) to learn the realities of motherhood and the toll it takes not just physically, but mentally and emotionally, and for those who have no interest in becoming parents but have a mother, to better understand what she went through and therefore who she is and who she became. It is a needed book focused not on how a child will turn out, but how a person truly transforms after going through pregnancy and childbirth.
This portrayal of motherhood is incredibly important and one that needs just as much, if not more, real estate than the ultra positive messaging of motherhood we are fed all our lives. It is raw, it is real, it is frustrating but it is hopeful. It helps make mothers who feel complex, nuanced feelings about becoming parents — and not just the happy, rosy ones — feel less alone.
There is a better way for mothers, and in turn, their children and society at large — it just takes actual care and thought and push back on patriarchal and capitalistic systems to get there. Highly recommend, especially as a thoughtful gift to a new mom.
Underlined quotes:
“The institution fostered the idea that women are born with a ‘natural’ maternal ‘instinct’ rather than needing to develop knowledge and skills as caregivers… It was a set-up, in which mothers were destined to fail.”
“No one was talking about pain; about birth as an emotional process; about how it felt to have grown another human, to be two people at the same time, and then to be vacated, to push a person into being.”
“Half of new mothers experience mental health problems but only half of those will seek help.”
“Being in the closest possible physical relationship with another being was one of the most enlivening, wild and interesting experiences of my life.”
“On paper, I was told, the birth was ‘textbook.’… What we have come to accept as ‘normal’ birth is, in fact, deeply disturbing for many women.”
“It’s going well. It’s all fine. The baby is really well. Yes, feeding well. It’s all fine. The lack of sleep is fine. The crying is totally fine. The screaming is fine. The thoughts of death are fine. We are so fine!… Best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Why are we sending a high-risk group off to spend an unknown period of time at home alone, where they must look after vulnerable infants and recover from the trauma of giving birth, while burdened with loneliness, lack of sleep, and a shedload of impossible cultural expectations, including the imperative to enjoy every minute of it?”
“These women loved their children unconditionally. That didn’t mean they loved motherhood unequivocally.”
“The notion of a ‘natural’ maternal instinct… This idea continued to reduce women to feeling, instinctual beings, confined — newly — to the home, in opposition to the rational man who belonged in the public sphere.”
“If a community values its children it must cherish their parents.”
“My understanding of my own parents had not been quite right. I had overestimated what an adult, a parent, could do. How perfect they could, and should be. My expectations had not been realistic.”
“Babies and young children look at us with full eye contact, and none of the self-consciousness and shame that comes with adulthood… They demanded new ways of being. Silliness. Cuddles. Repetition. Some of it was painful and boring, some of it was magical… They had no time for self-doubt. They were exactly who they wanted to be. They wanted to move! They wanted to dance! To touch. To laugh! They needed me to be in the present… and so I fell in love with the world again.”
“They invent words and questions and ideas I couldn’t dream of. I live with a small artist who draws made up creatures every day. Their minds overflow with ideas and possibilities. They cherish the world; they cherish being alive.”
“What was a good life? What if we didn’t have to work so hard? How much do we need? No, how much do we actually need? What am I entitled to? What is my time worth? Who am I serving? Who is benefiting?”
“My job is to make it possible for her to leave me, to walk away from our present intimacy and form her own life… This intimacy has a shelf life. Already, it hurts. I feel a premonition as I watch them grow before my eyes. This is life, and it is hard, and it is right.”
Book no. 5 of 2025
We the Animals - Justin Torres
Beautiful. Lyrical. Raw. Says so much in such a small book. Follows a young boy confronting his identity, sexuality and idea of masculinity all while trying to fit in with his two older brothers, machismo dad and passive mom in their chaotic, messy family home.
Underlined quotes:`
“See how I made them uneasy. They smelled my difference... They believed I would know a world larger than their own... All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud.”
“‘I was thinking how pretty you were,’ he said. ‘Now, isn’t that an odd thing for a father to think about his son? But that’s what it was. I was standing there, watching you dance and twirl and move like that, and I was thinking to myself, Goddamn, I got me a pretty one.’”
“Both Ma and Pa had held private conversations with me about my potential, about this bookishness that set me apart from my brothers; both encouraged me to apply myself — they hinted that I would have an easier time in this world than they had, than my brothers would ever have, and I hated them for that.”
“She holds the clothes on her lap. The son will not speak to her. She watches him, and she wants to tell him that he can put all his hate on her; she will take it all, if that’s what he needs her to do.”