Tag: feminism

Episode 116: Rossi and Sibley on narrating motherhood

~ Kathleen Collins

This episode exemplifies the ideals of Indoor Voices. It is a conversation between two people whose work overlaps and interfaces, both working away at CUNY for years without knowing of the other until very recently, and now that they have met, they have already collaborated and have so much to talk about that it justifies a podcast of its own. You’ll also witness them truly thinking and listening – in real time. It is the exact opposite of a scripted conversation. Dr. Destry Maria Sibley is a recent CUNY graduate center alumna whose dissertation is entitled, “Narrating Mother, Narrating Twenty-First Century America: On Choice, Refusal, and Relation.” Dr. María Julia Rossi is professor in the Modern Languages and Literatures dept at John Jay and the author of, among other books, Narrar Las Madres or Narrating Mothers. To put it too simply, the nexus of their scholarly Venn diagram is narratives about motherhood. They talk about the proliferation of motherhood literature in the last decade and a half; the presence in more recent memoirs of maternal ambivalence; the freedom of fictional characters to express less nuanced feelings and behaviors;  the role of a political angle on motherhood narratives, asking whether the political and the personal are on a continuum or exist as a dichotomy; the differences between motherhood literature in Spanish and English; and how texts on motherhood both reflect cultural evolution and affect it.

Recommended reading:

  • Eva Baltasar, Boulder
  • Rachel Cusk, A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother
  • Laura Freixas, A mí no me iba a pasar: Una autobiografía con perspectiva de género
  • Ariana Harwicz, Matate, amor (translated as Die, My Love)
  • Nuria Labari, La mejor madre del mundo (translated as World’s Best Mother)
  • Jane Lazarre, The Mother Knot (translated as El nudo materno)
  • Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow
  • Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive
  • Valeria Luiselli, Los ingrávidos (translated as Faces in the Crowd)
  • Lorena Salazar Masso, Esta herida llena de peces (translated as This Wound Full of Fish)
  • Brenda Navarro, Casas vacías (translated as Empty Houses)
  • Helen Phillips,The Need
  • Anne Boyd Rious, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters
  • Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream

Bonus listening:

This episode was recorded at John Jay College’s brand new Digital Creation Lab. Thank you, Program Manager Girard Tecson for making the studio space available to us.

Listen to Episode 116 now! (Apple Podcasts)

Follow us! Indoor Voices (Apple Podcasts) (X)

Episode 114: Reitz and Rutigliano on female anger

~ Kathleen Collins

Dr. Caroline Reitz is an associate professor of English at John Jay and the Graduate Center and the author of Female Anger in Crime Fiction published by Cambridge University Press in the Elements in Crime Narratives series. She is in conversation in this episode with Dr. Olivia Rutigliano, a writer, film critic, and editor at Literary Hub and Crime Reads. Together they take on the female anger ecocsystem, particularly the way anger is portrayed in popular culture, the role that anger plays, and its potential and its limits. They ask where justice fits into the narratives of, for example, the streaming series Killing Eve, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Bad Sisters and in the novel My Sister, the Serial Killer. They ask what pop culture’s role is in bringing the causes and outcomes of anger to the fore and if these representations can be educational and empowering. They address trad wives, female assassins and the chicken and egg conundrum of madness and anger. They reference bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Malcolm X, Sara Paretsky, Patricia Melo, George Orwell, Victorian studies, and all the waves of feminism. They reminisce about the olden times when ultra rich megalomaniacs used to be philanthropic and at least ostensibly concerned about humanity. They weave in the importance of baby goats and recycling your tuna cans, and Caroline comes up with a crime plot on the spot. This conversation will fire you up in good ways and, well, that’s one of the questions asked here, and not rhetorically – what use is getting fired up?

Caroline Reitz is Associate Professor at John Jay and the Graduate Center and directs the Vera Fellows Program at John Jay. She is currently teaching two literature classes: Text and Context (with a focus on crime fiction and activism) and Special Topics in the 19th Century. In Spring 2026 she will teach a class at the Grad Center called “Bad Sisters.” 

Olivia Rutigliano is a film critic, editor at Literary Hub and Crime Reads and an instructor at John Jay College, currently teaching a course on justice and literature in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department.

Mentioned in this episode:

Listen to Episode 114 now! (Apple Podcasts)

Follow us! Indoor Voices (Apple Podcasts) (X)