Publisher Description
An insightful and provocative exploration of the relationship between motherhood and art through the lives of women artists and writers.
What does it mean to create, not in "a room of one's own," but in a domestic space? Do children and genius rule each other out? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge.
With fierce empathy and vivid prose, Phillips evokes the intimate struggles of brilliant artists and writers, including Doris Lessing, who had to choose between her motherhood and herself; Ursula K. Le Guin, who found productive stability in family life; Audre Lorde, whose queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms; and Alice Neel, who once, to finish a painting, was said to have left her baby on the fire escape of her New York apartment. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, The Baby on the Fire Escape illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary women’s lives.
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About Marnye Young
Marnye Young is a SOVAS award–winning narrator for New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling authors. A SAG-AFTRA voice, stage, and screen actor, she has spent her life in the South, Midwest, and North. When she isn’t narrating, she’s fishing, following NASCAR, volunteering, raising chickens, and “mom“ing her identical twins.