Behind the idealised image of maternity there are many truths that are frequently hidden, namely physical pain, tiredness, professional and career concerns, dissatisfaction, and even regret. There is a gap between the contradictions a mother may experience and what her milieu and tradition dictate she is supposed to feel. The silenced unease of many mothers draws attention to the importance of care, help and attention in both private and public spheres. Jane Lazarre is the author of The Mother Knot (in Spanish, El nudo materno), a major work of reference on maternity and feminism. She talks with the writer Bel Olid about the personal and social contradictions of maternity and also about other struggles aiming to construct a more democratic and just society.

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https://www.cccb.org/en/multimedia/videos/jane-lazarre-and-bel-olid/230216

Jane on a panel in Barcelona at the Open City Thinking Biennial speaking on writing and narratives.

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https://www.cccb.org/en/activities/file/conversation-with-noviolet-bulawayo-najat-el-hachmi-and-jane-lazarre-moderated-by-tania-adam/230037

In a letter to his baby grandson, Bill Lazarre wrote that “unfortunately, despite the attempts by your grandpa and many others to present you with a better world, we were not very successful.” Born in 1902 amid the pogroms in Eastern Europe, Lazarre dedicated his life to working for economic equality, racial justice, workers’ rights to name just a few of his goals. He was also dedicated to his family, especially his daughters, whom he raised as a single father following his wife’s death. In this highly nuanced and sensitively written book, Jane Lazarre weaves personal memories with documentary materials—such as her father’s massive FBI file—to tell his fascinating history as a communist, a Jew, and a husband, father, and grandfather.

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http://lilith.org/blog/2017/08/the-communist-and-the-communists-daughter-an-interview-with-jane-lazarre/

I try to rise up each time the pits of Trump fears and anger draw me down. Many people speak of the tangle of old fears and new, past traumatic times bleeding into these times now, like a ruined watercolor painting — liquid stress muddying what needs above all at this time to be crystal clear. Friends talk of their inability to read the newspaper, watch television news or go to social media. “I listen to music, read a book, take a walk,” each one says. I do the same, but then we reverse ourselves: we must stay informed. How else to prepare for the inevitable struggles ahead?

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http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/39237-where-do-they-keep-the-white-people

In the summer of 2009, Lilith excerpted a section of Jane Lazarre’s harrowing novel, Inheritance. The book was recently published and Lilith’s Fiction Editor, Yona Zeldis McDonough, interviewed Lazarre–author of ten books and creator of the undergraduate writing program at Eugene Lang College at the New School—about historical fiction, blacks and Jews, and her feelings about our first mixed-race president.

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http://lilith.org/blog/2012/01/a-conversation-with-jane-lazarre/

“The narrative into which life seems to cast itself surfaces most forcefully in certain kinds of psychoanalysis, and Cardinal proves herself ideal in rendering this ‘deep story’ aspect of her life.” (Toni Morrison, from Playing in the Dark p. v, writing about a story of an emergence from madness, The Words to Say It, by Marie Cardinal)

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http://www.hamiltonstone.org/hsr14fiction.html#lazarre