The collaborative effort of thirty-four zine-making parents, this fourth issue of Mamaphiles takes on the wilder side of parenthood – from toddler-chasing to rabble-rousing. “Children are natural born hell-raisers,” wrote Henry Miller. And as Mamaphiles' writers can attest, raising them can be an act of revolution.

Corbin Lewars’ Creating a Life is about many things: surviving a miscarriage, confronting long-forgotten memories of rape, conceiving and seeing a second pregnancy to term, and eventually delivering a son, at home, and fulfilling her wish of becoming a mother and writer. But Corbin’s story is about more than overcoming her past and achieving the tangible milestones of pregnancy and new motherhood. It is about a women finding her own voice and gaining the strength to trust her feelings, instincts, and desires. And through learning to believe in herself, she gains the courage to become both a mother and a writer -- on her own terms.

Ever read one of those book or film reviews and think “That review is as much about the reviewer as anything else.” This is one of those reviews, but then as the mother of a daughter and the daughter of a mother, it would be dishonest to say I could approach Andrea N. Richesin’s Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond any other way.

Back in January, I promised to review Because I Love Her before Mother’s Day. By the time my advanced reading copy arrived in April, I was in the throes of selling my house, moving into a town home, grieving a long marriage and becoming a single mother. I stared at the book on my nightstand, the title in gentle pink over the black and white photograph of a smiling mother holding her wee daughter. I imagined all the stories of happy unadulterated bonding and sulked. One night insomnia and a sense of responsibility struck simultaneously and I opened the book randomly to the unexpected.

Fallen leaves
Blow like small tornadoes.
Twisting and turning,
Picking up dust along the way.

Sunshine strong in
A cloudless sky
Distorts sight.
But deep in darkness
The eyes must turn
Inward.
Self-reflection difficult
No impossible.

After 15 years, the print version of Hip Mama is getting a new editor!

The Spring '08 issue--the one I'm working on right now--is the last issue of print zine the Hip Mama I'll edit. I plan to stay on as Yo Mama & a consulting editor.

Susan: I've always liked reference books (I am, after all a librarian). When I was growing up, one of my favorite books was the Girl Guides Handbook (when we were in Canada) & later the Girl Scouts Handbook. I went back & read those even after I stopped doing the scouting thing. They were nice reference for all sorts of random things that struck my fancy & I could sit down & read a little bit then wander off to play & use what I just learned about (or not).

When I first found out I was to become a father, I was curious if there were any good books on fatherhood out there. Perhaps I was a little envious of my wife, who seemingly had a mountain of interesting, truthful, down-to-earth books on motherhood -- The Hipmama Survival Guide, The Mother Trip, Mothers Who Think, The Big Rumpus, and many others. I read all of these, but I wanted something of my own, something that talked about fatherhood in the language and experience of the world I lived in. But all I could find was Bill Cosby’s Fatherhood and related titles, and while I don’t have anything against the Coz, he just ain’t my style. He didn’t speak to me.

My new book, HOW TO BECOME A FAMOUS WRITER BEFORE YOU'RE DEAD, is available now – online (http://www.arielgore.com) or at your local independent.

Booklist says it's "One of the snappiest, most useful books a writer for hire is likely to read."

Includes interviews with Julia Alvarez, Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Cho, Dave Eggers, Michelle Tea, and others.

Ayun Halliday emailed to say: "I think it's fantastic, for aspiring and established writers alike!"

Susie Bright says: "Your book is WONDERFUL--encouraging and funny and right on."

And Erika Lopez says: "This book is kick ass! The next best thing to sitting down with some of these folks over beers and talking shop. I love it!"

Maybe you'll love it, too!

THE SUPER-PREGNANT SPRING TOUR STARTS APRIL 12! Please come to one of the shows... All free and kid-friendly! Dates inside...

Inconsolable: A Conversation with Marrit Ingman
By Stacey Greenberg

Marrit Ingman’s memoir on postpartum depression, Inconsolable: How I Threw My Mental Health Out with the Diapers, is on the shelves now. The book is smart, funny, and groundbreaking. She writes honestly about her struggle to effectively parent her high-needs child when all she wanted to do was drive off a highway overpass.

Stacey Greenberg, the creator of the zine Fertile Ground: For People who Dig Parenting recently talked with Marrit via email to discuss the book, talk about the current state of motherhood, and even make fun of Dr. Sears a little.

The George W. Bush Coloring Book: An Interview with Karen Ocker

By Jennifer Williams

Hey, moms! It's almost that time of year again! With the presidential election right around the corner, why not get you and your little radical the George W. Bush Coloring Book? See what illustrator Karen Ocker has to say about the creative process that brought it to life and then run and get your little rabble rouser-in-training her very own copy today!

Waiting for Bebé: An Interview with Lourdes Alcañiz
by Jennifer Williams

Nopalitos for dinner? It's okay for mamis to indulge in the prickly green treats, according to Lourdes Alcañiz. During her first pregnancy, Alcañiz kept an ear out for that friendly and trusting voice that was impossible to hear thousands of miles away from friends and family. An award-winning journalist, Alcañiz soon decided to write a book for other expecting mamas to fill that void. That book became Waiting for Bebé: a Pregnancy Guide for Latinas. It includes a helpful appendix chock full of information, and is a handy resource to keep by any new or expecting mother's bedside. Alcañiz took some time out of her busy schedule to chat with me on the phone from Spain.

The 8 Most Embarrassing Things about My Mother
by Maia Swift

Excerpted from Whatever, Mom: Hip Mama's Guide to Raising a Teenager by Ariel Gore with Maia Swift . . . available now!

1. Dyes her hair every time she gets a gray--and it’s obvious.

2. Wears her own company’s T-shirts with ripped jeans and biker boots as if she’s some kind of punk revolutionary.

3. Acts like a little kid around me and my friends, like when she walks in and says, “Are we having a slumber party, Girls?!?� (I know it’s a joke, but we’re not laughing with you, Mom.)

Excerpt from Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life: Or How I Learned to
Love the House, the Man, the Child

When I became a mother, part of me thought I had to undergo a radical
personality overhaul. I had been ambitious, prone to curse, ironic, and
rebellious-- often in a rather adolescent form. None of this struck me as
mom material.

Moms, I thought, were people who were simultaneously perky and selfless.
Sure I'll head up the PTA book sale! I'd love to. They were enthusiastic
about service-- anything to help their children. They were efficient and
resourceful.

Mamaphiles
by Lindsey Campbell-Rock

An avid zine reader in my teen years, I was excited to learn about the mama zine scene. Frankly I’m a little slow when it comes to the world of alterna-parenting, I didn’t realize that any mama zines existed, until I stumbled upon Hip Mama last year. My daughter was nearly one year old when this whole sub-culture was opened up to me. Upon discovering Mamaphonic.com, I was delighted to see zines, zines and more zines. I’ve been collecting and savoring all sorts now, for the better part of a year. With so many zines to choose from, it is quite the task figuring out which to order, what the essence of each is. Each writer has such a unique voice; it is so exciting to read what all these other mamas have to say.

Twists and Turns: An Interview with Janet McDonald
by Jennifer Williams

Let her tell it, Janet McDonald is a project girl through and through. Author of the critically-acclaimed memoir Project Girl, she made it from the not-as-mean-as-you-think streets of the Farragut Housing Project in Brooklyn, NY to champagne toasts with Parisian literati, complete with her sense of self intact. Earlier this year, she was honored with the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent for Chill Wind, the second book in the trilogy chronicling the lives of teenage mothers and the different paths they choose. McDonald concludes the saga in her latest book, Twists and Turns. Listen in as we chat about how she got from the projects to Paris, from one project girl to another.

Please Don't Kill the Freshman: an interview with Zoe Trope
by Mina Lavender

Recent high school graduate Zoe Trope is the precocious author of a critically lauded memoir. Hip Mama asked one of our own expert teenage staff members to read the book and interview the writer.

Mina: I know this work started out as a zine, but how did it
become a book?

A review of Soha Bechara's Resistance: My Life for Lebanon,
translated by Gabriel Levine
By Laura Fokkena

In 1988, Soha Bechara bought some Jane Fonda workout tapes in preparation for her new job as personal aerobics instructor to the wife of Antoine Lahad, chief of militia in charge of Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon, a job Bechara took with the clandestine intention of assassinating her boss's husband. The image of this twenty-year-old Lebanese revolutionary, revolver in her purse, using a mixture of French and Arabic to talk about building the abdominal muscles while Hanoi Jane does jumping jacks in the background has to be one of the most compelling -- if bizarre -- representations of war, occupation, and the surrealism of postcolonialism to emerge in the last decade. Eventually Bechara would put two bullets in Lahad's chest. He lived, but her act earned her ten years in a Lebanese prison.

Punk Planet says Daphne Gottlieb's work speaks to the present historical moment in a beautifully eloquent, dramatic, and everyday kind of way. Roger Corman calls her poems courageous and startling. Lynn Breedlove reports that Daphne's machete take on life leaves no one standing except us, for it's us she aims to elevate, the fucked over and the fucked up, and for that we thank her.

Final Girl
an excerpt from the new book
by Daphne Gottlieb

bikini killer

at 4, it's already clear
that mimi's going to grow
up to be one of those ladies

Contemplating a vegan diet? The vivacious and engaging Sarah Kramer, co-author of HowItAllVegan and The Garden Of Vegananswers questions from the Hip Mama studio audience about all things vegan!HM: Have you always been vegan?

An Interview with Ayun Halliday

From the archives... summer 2001...

This Road Sponsored By The Can Do Club

7/30 - Portland

Ragged and worn from a summer of traveling to Las Vegas and Colorado with the family, seeing the all-girl One Railroad Circus in Santa Fe, jumping one step ahead of and then surviving the monumental Portland gathering of Hip Mamas, my first trip to Europe and the Paris Hip Mama event, I stumbled downtown and managed to purchase the one thing I said I would never buy: a Volvo station wagon.

Continuing archives....

It Was Just A Few Hours of My Lifeby Kim Cooper

Wife of a Rock Starby Ami Thomas

Pumping-in-Styleby Christine Ferris

The Book of Dead Birdsby Gayle Brandeis

Chinaby Laruel O'Rourke

The Joys of Joint Custodyby Debra McCorkle

Some Thoughts on Watering Cars and Edging Children