The Language of Mothers

The Language of Mothers is a hybrid memoir grounded in the power of prose and poetry. It is an imaginative tapestry of women's storytelling that punctures narrative craft to illuminate the inheritance of domestic trauma and the voicing of familial stories that are healing spaces that carry through time. The Language of Mothers is about two mothers caught in abusive relationships, impoverished with children, with few avenues of escape. These stories shed light on the culture of American motherhood as a failure for women, perpetuating a system of patriarchal ideals that only values the nuclear family as whole spaces of abundance, love, and worth. At nineteen, Rain Wright's mother left Dronfield, England, traveling through Europe before landing in New York in the turbulent 1960s. Swept up in the changing societal wave, Elizabeth, her mother travels to California, where she meets her future abuser, Rain's father. This memoir is the story of Elizabeth's courageous escape with three young children, and it is the story of Rain's escape decades later. The Language of Mothers navigates the inheritance of trauma, finding that storytelling and art, for both women, become the impetus for healing. Elizabeth packs her children's belongings in black plastic bags and hides them in the brush along Elk Ridge Road, in California, making her daring escape with the help of friends and an ex-lover. She flies with her children across an ocean to the safety of Hawai?i, where she finds art, lomi lomi, music, and security. After Elizabeth's passing from breast cancer in 1996, her stories, inherited from years of car rides around Hawai?i Island, are the language of mythmaking. The Language of Mothers is an intimate look at why women stay too long in abusive relationships and an act of defiance and regenerative love. Rain's story is a tapestry of early childhood trauma as witness to her mother's abuse, domestic terror at the hands of her children's father, and her own escape narrative. The Language of Mothers deeply sees the aftereffects of domestic abuse, including her eldest daughter's suicide attempts, her middle daughter's strive for perfection, and her youngest daughter's need for control through anorexia. Women's stories can heal. Rain interweaves traumatic parts of her past but recounts acts of love, telling her daughters stories and becoming their storyteller.