Buchanan, Andrea

Expectations versus Gut Feelings

In Mother Shock, Buchanan compares motherhood with a foreign country, where the rhythms of life are different and one is constantly sleep deprived. According to Buchanan, a new mother goes through four stages of adjustment, similar to the emotional dislocation of culture shock: initial euphoria, irritation, recovery, and finally, adjustment. In her essays, which roughly cover the first three years of her daughter's life, Buchanan talks freely about fears and insecurities, feelings of guilt and ambivalence, and finding joy in unexpected places. It is her stated goal to invite a dialogue about what mothers really feel, instead of what they should be feeling. The form (31 fairly short essays) also fits the lifestyle of mothers, both in regard to reading and writing.

It's a Boy and its companion piece It's a Girl are collective literary explorations of what it means to mother sons and daughters. The authors examine gender roles and gendered expectations. In her own contribution to It's a Boy, capturing the time in late pregnancy when almost everyone was asking her whether she was having a boy or a girl, Buchanan tries to come to terms with stereotypes like “boys are easier than girls,” and also confesses her conflicted feelings about the prospect of having a boy. In It's a Girl, many of the writers struggle with how to shelter their daughters from damaging feminine stereotypes. Buchanan's introduction to the collection comments on how mothering daughters forces women to revisit parts of their own girlhood that they would rather leave behind.

Literary Mama is a collection of some of the standout pieces published on the widely successful Website with the same name, of which Buchanan was a founding editor. The site, launched in November 2003, was the brainchild of Buchanan and other women writers frustrated by what they perceived as a lack of readily available literary writing about motherhood. Speaking about their unique experiences in an unsentimental style, these writers reject the artificial binary of the mind and the body and prove that motherhood and creativity are not mutually exclusive. This ties in with Buchanan's own conviction that becoming a mother helped her become a real writer.

The Daring Book for Girls was conceived as a response and sequel to Conn and Hal Iggulden's The Dangerous Book for Boys. It attempts to strike a balance between doing and learning, offering a compendium of information and things to do from a time before computers and video games. Many of the activities are centered on sports and the outdoors; they include karate moves and yoga routines, instructions for mastering the jump rope and perfecting cartwheels, and rules of the game for basketball and netball. The book also includes more “girly” topics, like [Page 147]how to press flowers, as well as profiles of queens of the ancient world and today's real-life princesses.

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