excerpt
The cherry season began the day you were born. It hasn’t all been cherries, of course. But from the moment I saw your puffy little face (the face of one who no longer fit in his mother’s belly), I never knew darkness again.
I owe your birth to a close friend. She had a dream about me the night before and called to tell me to get to the doctor quickly. In her dream, your life was at risk. I went that same day and the doctor found that the placenta was drying up. He said the blood-flow was no longer satisfactory and scheduled a C-section for the next day.
This friend is the author of the line that occurred to me when you came into the world: “Even when you’re here, I miss you.” Being a poet, she is clairvoyant, and it was thanks to a vision of hers that you were born. I, who used to be skeptical about clairvoyance, have believed in visions ever since. In order to be clairvoyant, one must be sensitive to the unconscious, and poets are.
synopsis
What kind of mother am I, Betty Milan asks herself in this book. How could I have avoided the mistakes I have made?
Allowing the question to guide her, she writes to her son and revisits their personal history to discover the answer. She realizes that she doesn’t recognize herself in any style of motherhood and concludes that, in order to act appropriately, a mother needs to listen to her child. For her, there is no such thing as a model for a mother, or a model mother.
Without ever overstepping the limits that their relationship imposes, she writes about her love life, ignoring the centuries-old taboo that one should not talk about such things with their children and, in so doing, postulating that children need to hear them.
A gripping book that examines what it is to be a mother and a woman, entirely based on the author’s own life from birth to maturity, including her studies with Lacan in Paris and her return to a Brazil that she rediscovers through analysis.
Free of the notion that good mothers are infallible, Betty Milan communicates this liberation to her readers.
history
Letter to My Son (22/04/2013) was launched at Espaço Cult (photos) with the historian Mary del Priore present. Even before the launch, repercussions were already being felt in the press, with generous write-ups in the magazines Bravo!, Claudia, Cult and in the newspapers O Estado de S. Paulo and Folha de S. Paulo. According to Mary del Priore, this is the first autobiography published by a woman writer in Brazil.
opinion
In this book, the order of the day is ‘daring’. A participant of the sexual revolution and other contemporary political and behavioral revolutions, the author is living testimony of the advances in women’s rights and refuses to bend to the societal pressures that would keep mothers in a cloister. Her Letter to My Son is a profoundly serious reflection on the condition of mothers in this century. Mirian Paglia, journalist
We must salute Betty’s work, which is of great importance, courageous and, as I have said before, pioneering. Mary Del Priore, historian
areas of interest
Literature, Psychoanalysis.
critical reaction
letter to my son
where to purchase
Livraria Cultura (portuguese – printed) | Livraria Cultura (portuguese – e-book)