Mean Mama

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Mean Mama by Deena November tells the truth about motherhood, stripping away the pretty, expected, and sandblasting centuries of lies. She says: There is no returning to before… your body will never look or feel the same. She says… you imagine driving both you and her into a truck or steep guardrail and off a cliff. With unforgettable detail and hard-rock narrative, November rips a path for love, leaving us … bloody, vulnerable, and high. ~Jan Beatty, Jackknife: New and Selected Poems, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017

In Deena November's debut book, Mean Mama, the poet gives us a gritty, scathingly funny and poignant view of post-modern motherhood. In Jewish-American culture, the "Woman of Valor" is the ideal, and November takes a blowtorch to those expectations. I admire the courage, humor, and unsparing detail as the poet shares the messy reality of "feeling guilty about everything" and the rocky path to self-acceptance. Highly recommended, especially for young mothers and for those who love them. ~Joan E. Bauer

The opening poem “Birthing” houses lines like “It will never be a small hole again,” and from this blunt, honest start its clear Mean Mama isn’t going to be a typical book about motherhood. These poems get to the raw, bloody mess, the dead-tired stink of motherhood. Deena November has created a speaker who knows she is different than the women who cover up when breastfeeding, the women who would never turn never their backs at the playground, the women who would never utter the words “Mezuzah” and “cock” in the same sentence—she defiantly moves through their world. ~Jennifer Jackson Berry, author of The Feeder

Motherhood can be lonely business and we rarely talk honestly about that. This is why I am so grateful for Deena November! In her raw and wonderful debut collection Mean Mama, November makes motherhood, in all its relentless beauty and terror, less lonely. November’s voice is a friend who’s not afraid to tell the hard truths. There’s much love here, but there’s also weeping and guilt and fury and meltdowns and humor and terror and isolation and confusion and too many sleepless nights to count. With Mean Mama, November takes her place alongside poets like Annie Mennebroker and Beth Ann Fennelly as a fierce and fearless witness to the intricate and joyful and sometimes devastating experience of motherhood. She is a glorious confidante for any mother, any parent, who has ever felt they’re in this alone. – Lori Jakiela, author of Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe