Title & author
Body Full of Stars by Molly Caro May
Synopsis
In Body Full of Stars, Molly Caro May details a journey of motherhood built upon an extension of herself, her lineage, and her relationship with the earth. The memoir is ripe with memory and growth, a vulnerable depiction of mothering and the rage of womanhood birthed through an exploration of self, history, and the surrounding natural world.
Who should read this book
Fans of Heart Berries
What we’re thinking about
How are mothers “taught” to mother?
Trigger warning(s)
Sexual violence, eating disorders, sexism
How are mothers “taught” to mother? Parenting books, baby groups and birthing classes, word of mouth, perhaps. But in Molly Caro May’s Body Full of Stars (Counterpoint, 2018), May details a journey of motherhood built upon an extension of herself, her lineage, and her relationship with the earth. She instills that what mothers have been exposed to and witness, especially when growing up and later in life as they journey to find inner peace and strength, shapes their mothering habits, impressing upon them and subsequently their children. May’s memoir is ripe with memory and growth, a vulnerable depiction of mothering and the rage of womanhood birthed through an exploration of self, history, and the surrounding natural world.
“Maybe motherhood will give her a reason to become a great human,” writes May in the opening chapter (May, 5). This simple line sets the stage for the rest of her memoir-- how motherhood forces her own self growth, largely for the sake of her daughter, Eula, and the cultivation of identity. “Fear sees me… It asks me how I am going to raise a girl to love herself or her body....How will she ever see her own beauty?” (12). May’s own struggle to accept herself concerns her; she worries about how her daughter might impress upon that fear and subsequently develop the same insecurities. But “anatomy matters to me. I want my daughter to know that hers matters, especially because our culture pretends female anatomy doesn’t” (95). In addition to developing patterns of positive body language, she teaches Eula about her body, giving her the words to accurately describe her vulva, labia, and more. She educates Eula, impressing upon her respect and appreciation for the female body.
“Maybe we inherit the way we move through a passage,” May writes. “Maybe we inherit our assumptions. It is this matrilineal lineage I want to tell my daughter about. It is this matrilineal lineage I want to tell myself about” (14-15). As she watches her mother hold her daughter, May realizes the power in her lineage, the strength she can draw from her mother, her grandmother, and all the women that have come before her. And so in moments of difficulty she does, finding strength in “woman-love-blood” to help uphold her family (234).
And then there is the connection to the earth: “She is and all women are the understory-- that place where loamy soil and nutrients support the entire forest ecosystem to grow upward. Nothing could survive without her. She is the bedrock. She is all-knowing. I wonder what else we haven’t acknowledged her to be. I wonder what she will be next” (157). May, wandering her mountain home in Montana, begins to feel the connection and strength beneath her feet, healing her postpartum body through this grounding force. She realizes she “must re-wild” herself, live in harmony with the moon that “waxes and wanes in tandem with the cycle” (164, 165). And in healing her body and mind, she is able to give Eula that bedrock and help her become a powerful woman.
But while May details her journey into motherhood, does she do so in a way that is inclusive to non-binary identities? To women of color or different spaces of privilege? In moments, yes. “Rage is a circuit that starts in my pelvis and moves out two openings: my urethra or my throat...If I am angry, women of color must feel it a hundred thousand-fold,” she writes (84). And with the conversation of gender identity, she recognizes her positioning and her setbacks: “Though we are finally now starting to recognize the gender binary as false, it has raised me. I cannot separate my female parts from the way my culture has oriented or disoriented me” (13). But then there are moments when this acknowledgment feels missing. When she details the “women of [her] generation” that “have been trained to be masculine” or the “women long ago [that] knew how to engage ritual and move energy” (193, 219). Does she have the power to speak for her entire generation of women? And what about these women-- what cultural significance do we not learn as readers by the lack of further explanation and exploration?
Throughout May’s powerful read, her anger at the need for such a journey-- its necessity pouring from the patriarchal world that dictates womanhood and identity-- is revealed. This rage motivates her to be a better woman and mother for the sake of her daughter Eula. And though May’s story might not stretch across the conversation of privilege to the fullest extent it could (and should) at times, she takes that anger and acknowledges the privilege behind it: “My anger is a luxury...Those sisters who are still stoned or beaten or murdered elsewhere and here, they are the ones we must scream out for, speaking words they want to but cannot” (99). So while a mother, whose identity as such is born out of an exploration of self, lineage, and nature, may fight against patriarchal norms, May reinforces the importance of intersectionality. Though her anger and determination to explore and cultivate personal identity stem from the standards a white, male-dominated world instill, she makes clear that her anger must not be futile; her anger must be used to further the rights and freedoms of those that cannot speak, cannot take the same path through society as she can due to their identity and the societies that oppress them from moving forward.
“Even the most unsuspecting cultures honor the female—almost in secret, it seems, a holdover from another era...Women can teach me, us, how to live inside of mystery and awe. Doorways.”
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How does May’s childhood shape her path as a mother?
How does the earth strengthen May? Do we see it strengthen other women and girls within the text as well?
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