5 out of 5

Vile.  In a 5 out of 5 way.

Let’s get sexist for moment: I haven’t read a female author quite like Bonnie Jo Campbell before.  There’s probably not a good way to bipartisanly navigate through the female author vs. male author topic I own (because no one else seems to want to talk about it), wherein I try to explain that it’s only logical that men write from a male perspective and females from a female one and how this can perpetuate into reader base and preferences, along with the understanding that male writers have traditionally dominated the field – which is not a skill qualification, but another offshoot of the imbalance that’s been in place since the first man out-muscled the first woman and then got pissed off when she laughed derisively at his shriveled dingle – so I won’t go about over-explaining that opening statement but simply add to it: that Bonnie Jo Campbell writes in a way I don’t think we even imagine female authors writing.  There’s edgy, and confessional, and confrontational, but ‘Mothers, Tell Your Daughters’ is base and unapologetic, a deathbed rambling from a cancer-ridden old woman, justifying her parenting of her daughter (whom she calls ‘Sis’…), which seems to include allowing for rape, for abuse, and a lack of concern for education, or the effect of putting the kids to work at an early age, all because the unnamed woman did her task of putting food on the table and giving birth.  There’s no explanation or judgement – excepting those we’ll make about this type of person – it’s an unfortunately organic representation of a particular type of mentality, unfortunate in that exists and that Bonnie seems to understand it.  But let’s be clear: there also isn’t a slick moralization happening here, or some type of uplifting message.  Which might be found when piecing this story together with the others which will make up a forthcoming short story collection with the same title, and it will be interesting to see – because I’ll be reading that – if that will diminish the power of this tale, because, to me, ‘Mothers’ impacts in its frankness, and lack of clean endings.

I’m not from a rural area, but I was born in the midwest and close enough to places where characters like the one featured here might live.  I’ve maybe interacted with those people, or with those who grew up with those people and survived – as ‘Sis’ has seemed to in this story.  And reading Bonnie’s short, it definitely brought those interactions back to mind, and the way that I could brush off certain beliefs or comments as they did not affect my world.  They still don’t, of course.  Campbell, though, has dived in face first, immersing herself in those beliefs and comments.  It’s not humanizing or dehumanizing, it just seems to be.  Which is a powerful thing to read about, especially in a short burst with no easy emotional byline.