Black Milk is your first memoir, yet it retains fictional qualities, such as the pint-sized characters called “Thumbelinas” who represent various aspects of your personality.
I believe that in all of us, whether you’re a mother, a woman or a man, there are multiple selves and multiple voices. When we go out into the public sphere, we bring one of those voices to the fore. Before giving birth, I prioritised my intellectual and cerebral voice. Without being aware of it, I looked down on domestic work and rejected my maternal side.
You describe yourself as a “woman who is split inside” in the book, then talk about Julia Kristeva’s notion of the symbolic unity a child can bring. Yet the book refers to your experience of depression, which is often expressed as a kind of fragmentation.
At the beginning, there was a monarchy among the Thumbelinas. In time, they formed a plutocracy as they tried to topple my intellectual side. Then came anarchy, oligarchy and finally democracy. I tried to give all of them an equal voice. I think that out of fragmentation, oneness can be obtained. Motherhood is a tremendous experience for helping people see this. When we fall down, we break into pieces and that can be scary – but then you try to recompose yourself. What you make is not the same but better than before.
Pregnancy is sometimes treated as trivial – a quick recovery is expected. I liked the emphasis you placed on your grandmother’s advice, which others might have seen as useless and superstitious.
Women need more than just hospitals. This is a big change – spiritual, intellectual, physical – and it cannot be learned in a day. For me, it was quite ironic that my grandmother, who is less educated and more typically “Middle Eastern”, was more accepting of the idea of post-partum depression than my mother, who was raised in a more secular culture and better educated. My grandmother’s friends would describe the depression in terms of an evil djinn but they knew to take care of a woman for 40 days after she gives birth – somehow, there was an acceptance of depression that has been lost.
You seem purposefully neutral on the choices of the women writers you discuss. The book refuses to tie up the question of motherhood and writing.
Absolutely. In Turkey, though not only in Turkey, the pressure on women is tremendous: “When are you going to have kids? When are you going to get married?” Politicians talk about it on TV. It’s very hard for women to retain their autonomy. I wanted to show respect for an array of choices and ways of living.
And how has the reaction been?
It was amazing. It’s like something that stands in front of us but nobody talks about, especially in Turkey. I got very personal, very emotional emails and messages from all kinds of women.
I think we need a corrective on childbirth in Britain right now. The icy, flawless production of the royal baby seemed eerily distant from the reality of childbirth.
Even with the best intentions, people’s expectations are so high. The perfect baby. The perfect mother. Images are so important. I don’t think British people deal with emotional turbulence any better than people in Turkey – we don’t want to see weakness in the public arena, particularly at work. We want to see strength but I think there is something wrong with our definition of strength. For me, strength doesn’t mean being strong all the time. Strength is our ability to accept and deal with our weaknesses.
Recently there was a fierce reaction to an article in the Atlantic which suggested that a woman with intellectual aspirations should have only one child. Did you see it?
Yes, I did. I’ve heard the argument before and this kind of generalisation seems very problematic to me. I cannot know a person’s life. Look around: there are plenty of women who are perfectly happy without any children. I have friends who have adopted kids. I have friends who have three kids. I don’t think one formula should be imposed on all women.
Elif Shafak’s “Black Milk” is published by Penguin (£8.99)
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