black milk

Writing, motherhood and harem

Author's name: Elif Shafak

Black Milk is not just a journey through postpartum depression or the autobiography of a creative mother whose pen stopped producing words when she gave birth to her child. Rather, it is an experience of awareness of what can happen when the woman who gives birth to words and the woman who gives birth to children struggle, and how this struggle fractures the creative woman into multiple entities, depriving her of peace, serenity, and contentment, and leaving her, as Shafak writes, “perpetually obsessing about the path she neglected to choose.” In addition to the fun, lightheartedness, and humor of this book, it helps us women reconcile with our fragmented selves, in a style that does not provoke grief. Elif Shafak writes with the innocence of cartoons that portray everyone as innocent or human in the end, making us empathize with them.