Lipson Reflects on Truths and Fiction of Motherhood in Debut Book

In Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, Nicole Graeve Lipson, MFA ’22, examines how women often are reduced to ready-made templates and archetypes—a theme reflected in the very title of her debut book.

“There’s a blurry boundary between truth and fiction when one is a woman, and the stories we inherit can become so enmeshed that we no longer know what parts are true,” said Lipson. “After becoming a mother, I was still Nicole, but also stepped into this ‘you’re a mother’ identity, this kind of stock character of a mother.”

As she began writing essays for the book, released on March 4, Lipson said it really clarified how much performance womanhood can involve. Motherhood is just one of a series of fictional characters that women are pushed to step into during their lifespan, said Lipson.

No one looks like the ideal mother, the omnipresent and powerful archetype that persists in our culture, said Lipson. As a new mother, Lipson felt a lot of pressure to make herself resemble and align with the archetype.

Lipson didn’t start off with the goal of writing a memoir in essays. As she was writing individual essays – some of which won awards, including a Pushcart Prize, and were published in heralded spots like the annual Best American Essays anthology for 2024 – she noticed the common theme of motherhood.

As a passionate reader and former high school English teacher, literature is an integral part of Lipson’s life and how she processes her role as mother. In her story, “As They Like It,” the Best American Essays anthology selection, she incorporates Rosalind from Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

“Ironically, some fictional women, women who are creations of the imagination in literature, can feel more real in ways that real actual women,” said Lipson. “Literature allows us to peer into the consciousness of other human beings. We can see all the inner layers, contradiction, messiness, the darkness and light that lives in side of us.”

Lipson referenced Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and Susan Rawlings in Doris Lessing’s short story “To Room Nineteen”. They may be fictional, she said, but their texture and complexity make them very real.

Contrast that to when Lipson is passing a smiling mother holding her child’s hand at school drop off.

“I can weave whatever fiction around this woman. She never gets frustrated, has it all together, and she is fitting the ideal mother mold. But I have no idea what’s going on beneath the surface or what’s going on in her life, her complexities, hopes, dreams, and sadness. In that case, the fiction is more real than the real women before me.”

As Lipson wrote her essays, they were circling around the same questions and themes, and once she saw the theme, she envisioned a large scope of essays that could fit into a book-length project, which helped inform her writing.

While distinct, the essays are more or less chronological from experiences that impacted her greatly during girlhood and adolescence, in young adulthood, around new motherhood and becoming a seasoned mother, and beyond. Lipson said the reader follows her family’s growth.

“The essays in the end of book grapple with being a newly middle-aged woman and looking ahead at the years remaining to me,” said Lipson. “The very last essay is a very micro-flash essay contemplating death. It’s called ‘Memento Mori’, which is Latin for ‘remember you must die.’”

Lipson said the essays are about women’s desire, and her growing understanding of women’s desire and what she wants. One of the essays is about what to do with three frozen embryos after a successful round of IVF. Another is about exploring beauty standards in our culture while raising daughters in a culture that teaches girls to betray, and often do violence to their bodies.

In everything she writes, Lipson said writing process is laborious. Her former teacher, Writing, Literature & Publishing Distinguished Professor Jerald Walker said he knew he’d learn more from Lipson than she’d learn from him, that she pores over every word.

“Every word has a slightly different shade of writing. Joyful versus happy versus cheerful. They are synonyms, but have slight variations of meaning,” said Lipson. “Words become almost like scaffolding for the thinking at the topic at hand.”

Lipson said her writing process is like meditation. Writing helps her let go of nagging thoughts about motherhood to-do’s, like school registration.

“Words hold secrets, words hold the key, and feel like they hold the key to clearing up my confusion,” said Lipson. “If I can just find the right words, and string them together like beads on a necklace… if I can just pick true word after true word after true world, it will lead me to some larger truth.”

Lipson said all of her Emerson professors showed her an element of writing that made its way into the book. After reading some of her work, Walker encouraged her to get a literary agent, because he knew her writing was that good. Lipson said her book includes lessons learned from WLP Professor Emeritus Richard Hoffman, WLP Distinguished Professor Jabari Asim, and WLP Charles Wesley Emerson Professor Megan Marshall. Lipson and Marshall are participating in a joint event at Newtonville Books on April 1.

From taking Writing for the Boston Globe with WLP Associate Professor Susan Althoff, Lipson got her first byline in the Globe, and the Globe has since published two excerpts from her book.

“I do feel that the book would not exist without their encouragement and I wouldn’t have believed in myself and pursued this in the way I pursued it without their mentorship,” said Lipson.