Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged single mothers

Take It From Me

Take It From Me makes an emotional statement even more than a political one. This documentary film chronicles the time period after the passing of the 1996 Personal Responsibility Act, which placed a five-year limit on public assistance. Emily Abt, the producer and director, is a former social caseworker in New York City. She offers us the daily lives of four women who are struggling against great odds to raise themselves and their children up out of poverty.

Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship

My daughter has a t-shirt that reads “Friends are Forever, Boys are…Whatever”. It always gets a laugh, especially from her female teachers. And while most of us know that friends are not always forever, we do realize the importance of girlfriends. Every girl needs a girlfriend.

Sometimes Mine

Genie Toledo, the best cardiologist in Ohio, is in the midst of an eleven-year passionate love affair with Mike Crabbe, a married basketball coach residing in another state. Their love affair has survived the initial hiccups of insecurity, jealousy, and possessiveness. After a decade of physical and emotional closeness they have settled into this arrangement, perfectly understanding and respecting each others boundaries, and traveling to meet each other every Thursday. A series of events, including Mike’s diagnosis of prostrate cancer place Genie in the middle of Mike’s family affairs.

Sunshine

The doors have been flung wide open when it comes to the liberation of the modern day mother. Well, they are cracked considerably wider than they were thirty-five years ago at least. Gestating for ten years now, Sunshine, a film by Karen Skloss, eloquently portrays just how much our attitudes toward motherhood and family dynamics have changed over the past several decades. Skloss’s film is deeply personal yet not so focused on navel gazing that the viewer can’t glean some social commentary from it.

Who's Your Daddy?

Postmodern indeed. As a single Black lesbian mother, I assumed that a resource like this wouldn’t yet exist. On searching, I discovered a literary road map to queer parenting and family that is current, diverse and mini-encyclopedic in its breadth. Reading this work made me feel as though I had added to my family of choice.

The Woman You Write Poems About

Most of the time when I read poetry books, I’ll dog-ear the pages of poems I really like. I started to do this with Danielle (Dani) Montgomery’s collection, The Woman You Write Poems About, but within the first twenty pages I realized I didn’t have one non-bent-down page corner; every single poem in this collection is intriguing and amazing in its own way.

Running on Empty

When I was perhaps ten years old or younger, I used to sit in front of the television on weekend mornings, and flip around until I found a Save the Children show. I’d then proceed to watch the entire episode, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and cry.

My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy

Andrea Askowitz doesn’t mince words, and this book’s title is just the start. In My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy, Askowitz takes her readers on a blow-by-blow tour through her first trimester, back to her “before pregnancy” days, and then all the way through her second and third trimester, her delivery, and her postpartum period.

The Social Economy of Single Motherhood: Raising Children in Rural America

The Social Economy of Single Motherhood is a study of both facts and perceptions of single motherhood in rural Vermont in contrast to more general studies done on urban mothers. It details the circumstances behind every mom interviewed for the study instead of lumping them into the stereotype of single, poor, welfare moms who are just lazy and promiscuous.
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