Book Review: Black Milk: On Motherhood and Writing

A deep meditation by novelist Elif Shafak that should be mandatory reading for women writers

Photo credit — Ranjani’s personal archives

“Every book is a journey, a map into the complexities of the human mind and soul.”

This easy-to-read but layered non-fiction book by well-known novelist Elif Shafak is difficult to classify into a neat genre. Not surprisingly, the author warns us in the first few pages in a section tilted Note to Reader -

“This book was written with black milk and white ink — a cocktail of storytelling, motherhood, wanderlust and depression, distilled for several months at room temperature.”

There was a time, when Shafak defined herself using an eclectic mix of terms:

I am a writer.

I am a nomad.

I am a cosmopolite.

I am a lover of Sufism.

I am a pacifist.

I am a vegetarian and

I am a woman, more or less in that order.

Disparate selves and fragmented identity

Not surprisingly, the book unpacks this complex concoction of traits and preferences to bring a semblance of order to the tumultuous…