She explores one sonвЂ™s need for power and the potential traps of interpretation she falls into when trying to see his role-playing through adult eyes. But beyond simple conclusions about mother/child relationships, ZoffnessвЂ™s work allows us a window into the experience of how we both inherit and pass on different parts of ourselves. ZoffnessвЂ™s essays detail her experiences as a mother, as a friend to a mom who serves as a surrogate, and as a daughter.

Our bodies allow us ownership of space and communion with others, our minds, and the world at large.Д¬ourtney ZoffnessвЂ™s memoir in essays, Spilt Milk, explores the physicality of the body and how generational memory, anxiety, and disappointment entwine within us to conceive life.

Stories that reject traditional symbolic connections between physicality and meaning allow us to consider not just a bogus beginning-to-end arc of strength through struggle, but the relatively momentary, miraculous, and ridiculous nature of life. Is the body, in literature, meant as a symbol for oneвЂ™s existential nature? A totem? An emblematic representation of fear, joy, disappointment? Can the body in a narrative serve as a manifestation of inner turmoil, or even oneвЂ™s drive to create art? Or is the body better served when itвЂ™s just described as a container for the biological? A simple place to be? If we mythologize and create metaphors out of the body, we ignore its banal reality and its mechanical power.

Feed me spilt milk