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Written by Sarah Boslaugh Thursday, 10 September 2009 17:00

The life of a mother of two becomes a hero(ine)'s journey in this unusual mix of Mommy memoir and graphic novel.

256 pgs., B&W; 22.00 (hardcover)

(W&A: Nicole Chaison)

It seems obvious when you think about it: parenting may be the toughest job and most transformative experience out there, so why not cast the story of one mother in terms of our leading cultural myth, that of the hero's journey? Never mind that silly Joseph Campbell who said that women don't go on journeys because they are the destination: if it involves thresholds and trials and the getting of wisdom, it's fair game for the monomyth (what comparative mythologians like to call the hero's journey: and that's the last jargon you will hear from me today).

Nicole Chaison has been chronicling her experiences with motherhood in the self-published  hausfrau muthah-zine since 2003. She draws on that material in The Passion of the Hausfrau, a unique combination of motherhood memoir and graphic novel: the main story is told in prose with cartoons in the margins of each page cartoons commenting on the text—sort of like manuscript illuminations, hence the subtitle. They make the experience of reading more discursive and cyclical than linear. But didn't Marge Piercy tell us that nothing living resembles a straight line? I bet that goes double when you have two kids at home.

It all started when Chaison's mother gave her a present: the autobiography of football star and former high-school classmate Bill Romanowski. Chaison's parents had kept her up to date on his accomplishments over the years, which wasn't necessarily a kindness: while she struggled to pay the rent, he was a star in the NFL who financed a high-tech facility for their old high school. While she was subsisting on ramen noodles, he was partying with Adam Sandler. And now the jock had published a book while she was still scratching out a living as a freelance writer.

After a fit of jealousy and an attack of self-pity Chaison realized it was time to put up or shut up and set about writing a book of her own. The Passion of the Hausfrau is the result: it's conversational in tone and full of self-deprecating humor, but has some points to make along the way. Just writing the book is a political act: it says that there's a value in sharing real experiences about motherhood, which are not always pretty.  It's a worthy addition to the booming genre of Mommy Lit and will be of most interest to people whose life experiences resemble those of the heroine—white, middle class, educated mothers—but they have the same rights as anyone else to tell their stories.

I really like the form of the book. Life is too complex to be told as a linear narrative, and Chaison achieves a sort of polyphony by having four sources of information competing for your attention: the main text, which is conventional prose; the footnotes (which provide humorous asides or clarifications rather than scholarly references); the drawings in the margins; and the dialogue and other text associated with the drawings. Her art is pretty crude (it frequently reminds me of Lynda Barry, and I mean that as a compliment) but it's definitely cute and a good match to the tone of the words. I've seen similar efforts on a much smaller scale in shojo manga which sometimes have comics in the margin making comments on the main story, but Chaison makes the commentary an integral part of the main narrative.  

You can read an excerpt from the book here http://www.passionofthehausfrau.com/ and check out the author's blog at http://www.thehausfrau.com/2005/11/hausfrau-history.html. | Sarah Boslaugh