Alumna Nicole Lipson ’98 was inspired by many of her literary heroes as she wrote her new book, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, which came out March 4.
From Kate Chopin to Maya Angelou to Shakespeare, she uses literature in the book to grapple with society’s expectations of mothers, and of women.
“One of my essays, ‘As You Like It,’ is about my experience witnessing my oldest child migrate from the identity of a girl to the identity of a boy, and trying to figure out in real time, having no experience of this, how to parent in this situation,” Lipson said. “I turned toward [Shakespeare’s] ‘As You Like It’ and Rosalind became a filter through which I contemplated and grappled with the changes I was witnessing in my child.
“If you’re someone for whom books are an important part of life, tying them into your work is organic and natural.”
Lipson was an English major as an undergrad in the College of Arts & Sciences and said several professors had a major influence on her work. Lydia Fakundiny, a senior lecturer in English who passed away in 2013, taught The Art of the Essay class, which Lipson said “changed my life.”
“She took her students so seriously in every way that she scared us into taking ourselves seriously too,” she said. “She would write 1½ pages of comments on her typewriter on each of our essays. And she introduced me to essayists who have become models throughout my life.”
Lipson also appreciated classes on Shakespeare with English Professor Scott McMillin, who passed away in 2006, and fiction-writing with Lamar Herrin, professor emeritus in English.
After graduation, Lipson worked in publishing, then spent years as a high school English teacher and wrote essays for numerous publications. But it was motherhood that finally pushed Lipson into penning a book.
“Motherhood was the fire in my creative forging process,” she said. “It put me in touch with mortality and brought to the fore that life is short and it’s up to use it as our hearts most want to use it. I also think a lot about gender expectations, the roles that women take on through the female lifespan … Motherhood intensified those feelings, made them more urgent and more personal.”
Lipson’s book includes essays about raising her children and helping them to navigate the challenges they’ll face during life. But her book is about more than motherhood – she writes about early struggles with an eating disorder, about finding herself attracted to a younger man in a poetry class, about sometimes wanting to run away from her family for a bit of solitude.
“All of my essays start from some state of confusion, from something that’s happening that I want to sort through,” she said. “And in some ways, the central project of this book was to crack through the surface stories that we as women tell about ourselves, and instead to speak some of the truths we know so well in our hearts.”
Lipson said she hopes readers feel “like they’re having one of those self-revelatory conversation with their closest friend,” when they’re reading the book.
Lipson’s writing has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, LA Review of Books, The Millions, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other venues. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for a National Magazine Award, and selected for “The Best American Essays” anthology.
More News from A&S
Reducing plastic’s environmental impact with machine learning
Chemistry and Chemical Biology
History of art staff member publishes research on face pots
History of Art and Visual Studies
