Mother, She Wrote

Book excerpt: In this enjoyable and insightful book, Yi-Lin Yu takes the heated and ongoing feminist debate over motherhood and maternal subjectivity onto a new plane - in search of a new synthesis. With its specific focus on the three-tiered matrilineal narratives, Mother, She Wrote is distinguished by its complex and innovative deployment of psychoanalytic subject-relations theories, and a meticulous and detailed discussion of various literary texts, which calls forth a powerful reformulation of these narratives. One of the main strengths of this book is this simultaneous and tactful command of theory and literary practice. Apart from advocating the burgeoning development of women's writing of matrilineal narratives, the author also sheds new light on further research in the area of feminist motherhood and mothering.