Reading Room #02: A poem for Mother's Day by Rachel Zucker...plus a giveaway!

Not exactly a happy poem, but an apt one. Plus, I'm giving away a copy of Ruthie Ackerman's "The Mother Code" to one lucky subscriber.

Hello and happy Mother’s Day to all who celebrate!

I wanted to pop in with a live reading of a poem from a collection that has been a touchstone for me. I can’t remember who first told me about Rachel Zucker’s 2009 poetry collection “Museum of Accidents” and for that, I am regretful, because it was surely an intelligent and sensitive friend of mine who deserves to be credited for pointing me to a book that was an important part of my early motherhood. “Museum of Accidents” so moved me, I gifted it to every close friend of mine who became pregnant up until the point where I aged out of my friends becoming pregnant any more.

I’m not a natural-born mother. I actually never wanted kids. In fact, my memoir The Year of the Horses is very much about the difficult relationship I have with being mothered, and with mothering myself.

To this end, the poems in “Museum of Accidents”—which are related to the extreme physicality and passion and rage that comes from biologically birthing and then raising an infant—were deeply meaningful to me, and often the only place I felt that I could safely go with feelings I had toward motherhood that felt against the norm

Rachel Zucker’s beautiful poetry collection surrounded by personal photos of mine.

Want to hear one of the poem’s from Rachel Zucker’s book?

If you scroll to the top of this post, you can hear me read one of the poems from this collection that encapsulates the whole of it. If you like the poem, I recommend purchasing the collection—it’s a backlist feminist publication from a tiny tiny press, and it’s poetry, so basically, purchasing this collection would pretty much be a political action in 2025. But regardless, I hope that the poem stirs something in you, or makes you consider honoring the act of mothering and the experience of motherhood beyond a bouquet of flowers and an eggy brunch. (Not that I have anything against eggs. I think eggs are the best.)

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On the topic of mothers, I have a giveaway!

I’m not giving away a mother, I’m giving away a mother-centric book.

Journalist Ruthie Ackerman of the Ignite Writers Collective fame has a new book out called The Mother Code: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Myths That Shape Us. The publisher sent me two copies, so I’m giving one away.¹

This copy of The Mother Code could be yours! Read on for giveaway guidelines.

Here’s a bit about the book from Random House’s page:

Ruthie Ackerman had long believed that the decision to not have children was a radical act. She’d grown up being told that she came from a long line of women who had abandoned their kids and feared she would pass on her half-brother’s rare genetic disorder. So when she marries a man who doesn’t want children, she hopes she can be happy without any. But a voice in her head keeps returning to the question: What if mothering can be a radical act too? When her marriage veers off course, she goes searching through the twists and turns of her DNA to decide once and for all whether she should become a mother.

By the time Ruthie finally determines that she desperately wants a child, she learns that motherhood won’t happen the way she thought it would. Now she must enter the hall of mirrors where biology, genetics, and philosophy collide as she wonders what it means to both create and nurture a life. What does inheritance really entail? What does it mean to be a “good” mother? When it comes down to it, how important is nature versus nurture? And where are the models for what a “good life” can look like for women, both with and without children?

Synthesizing reportage and memoir, The Mother Code unravels how we’ve come to understand the institution of motherhood. What emerges is a groundbreaking new vision for what it means to parent: a mother code that goes beyond our bloodlines and genetics and instead urges us to embrace inheritance as the legacy we want to leave behind for those we love.

You can learn more about the book, here.

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Guidelines for the giveaway:

• As with all my book giveaways, participation in the giveaway is reserved for paid subscribers. Feel free to upgrade your subscription if you’d like to participate in this and other contests.

• Participation is limited to those living in the continental United States—unless you are willing to cover the cost of overseas shipping, in which case, enter away!

• Please do not enter this giveaway if you have already won a book via “Before and After the Book Deal” before.

• To enter, simply write in the comments why you feel that this book needs to be on your bookshelves. I’ll pick a winner by Wednesday, May 14th at noon EST. (That means put your entry in the comment section underneath this post.)

• If you are just now realizing that you wanted to gift someone something for Mother’s Day, but you totally forgot about it (or aren’t really into holidays in general), a reminder that I am offering a special version of my memoir The Year of the Horses that involves a handwritten card and bookplate for the recipient of your choice. Details about that are here.

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In closing:

Mother’s Day can bring up a lot of things for people, so whether you are celebrating it or dreading it, I hope you find beauty and stillness somewhere in the day.

I’m planning a lunch with friends and then we’re going paddling, which sounds just perfect to me! We will be eating eggs ;)

xo

Courtney

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1. Two disclaimers: I have not actually read Ruthie Ackerman’s book myself yet, but I have no doubt that I’ll like it. Secondly, there are some affiliate links to Bookshop.org sprinkled through this piece and most of my newsletters when I mention book titles other than mine. I use any modest monies earned there to purchase books via Bookshop.org myself, usually pre-orders of titles that need a leg-up in the marketplace.