The Baby on the Fire Escape cover art

The Baby on the Fire Escape

Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem

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About this listen

An insightful and provocative exploration of the relationship between motherhood and art through the lives of women artists and writers.

What does it mean to create, not in "a room of one's own," but in a domestic space? Do children and genius rule each other out? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge.

With fierce empathy and vivid prose, Phillips evokes the intimate struggles of brilliant artists and writers, including Doris Lessing, who had to choose between her motherhood and herself; Ursula K. Le Guin, who found productive stability in family life; Audre Lorde, whose queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms; and Alice Neel, who once, to finish a painting, was said to have left her baby on the fire escape of her New York apartment. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, The Baby on the Fire Escape illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary women's lives.

©2022 Julie Phillips (P)2022 Tantor Art & Literature Authors Gender Studies Literary History & Criticism Social Sciences
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Most relevant
It is fascinating to hear how so many important writers and artists negotiated creativity and motherhood. I will listen again.

Interesting insight into the creative process

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Fantastic interweaving of biography and writing of women on the joys and struggles of motherhood. Tremendously inspiring. No journey is straight and easy but there are routes to creativity and freedom.

Inspiring

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I want to relisten to this, to soak in the lives of these women, mothers, writers again. I also need to buy this book so I can hold their words and the words of the author in my hands physically. What a gift

So much juiciness in this book

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Love the book, so much information and great to tie themes together with such different creatives lives. hate the readers voice!

Such a great book for creative mothers

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