After the birth of her first child in 2006, Turkish writer Elif Shafek suffered from postpartum depression that triggered a profound personal crisis. Infused with guilt, anxiety, and bewilderment about whether she could ever be a good mother, Shafak stopped writing and lost her faith in words altogether. In this elegantly written memoir, she retraces her journey from free-spirited, nomadic artist to dedicated but emotionally wrought mother. Identifying a constantly bickering harem of women who live inside of her, each with their own characteristics-the cynical intellectual, the goal-oriented go-getter, the practical-rational, the spiritual, the maternal, and the lustful-she craves harmony, or at least a unifying identity. As she intersperses her own experience with the lives of prominent authors such as Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Alice Walker, Ayn Rand, and Zelda Fitzgerald, Shafak looks for a solution to the inherent conflict between artistic creation and responsible parenting.<\/p>\n
With searing emotional honesty and an incisive examination of cultural mores within patriarchal societies, Shafak has rendered an important work about literature, motherhood, and spiritual well-being.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After the birth of her first child in 2006, Turkish writer Elif Shafek suffered from postpartum depression that triggered a profound personal crisis. Infused with guilt, anxiety, and bewilderment about whether she could ever be a good mother, Shafak stopped writing and lost her faith in words altogether. In this elegantly written memoir, she retraces…<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":6319,"template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[53,47],"product_tag":[],"class_list":["post-6318","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-english-fiction","product_cat-kitaplar","first","outofstock","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"yoast_head":"\n