Accomplished storyteller Kristen Millares Young's communion with an ancient mother goddess and her quest to reconcile the incongruities of her "maddening matriarchs" provide an intriguing thematic framework for her first memoir-in-essays, Desire Lines. The Cuban American author's 15 essays traverse volcanic landscapes and oceanic depths, Spanish villages and Parisian museum archives, in pursuit of "unfettered" joyful mothering and "a version of femininity" she can believe in.
Young (Subduction) is a journalist and scholar with established roots in the Pacific Northwest, and its majestic, rugged beauty serves as a natural backdrop for contemplating how "vulnerability is a muscle that must be flexed to become strength." Desire lines, she explains, are "paths that emerge, eroded yet unforeseen, next to the routes that were planned for us." Raised in Florida by her abuela and abuelo while her mercurial mother, Carmen, supported the family, Young was expected to embrace Catholicism and remain silent about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her maternal grandfather, a pedophile. "Paternal indifference" and Carmen's refusal to confront what happened to her daughter affect the author "more deeply than the abuse itself." Rejecting "the cult of Mary," Young has turned instead to writing.
The essay "Of Meteorites and Matrimony" recounts Young's artistic and literary discovery of the Roman goddess Cybele, an "archetype of women's sexuality." Cybele's wielding of her ferocious power fascinates the author, because it stands in contrast to the women in her family who refused to assert their own powers to protect Young in childhood. In "She of Many Names," readers learn how Cybele was shorn of her pagan power by Emperor Constantine I and legitimized as mother to the "holy son." For both Young and Cybele, their power lies not in external labels but in their instinct for survival in treacherous times.
The freedom to "let herself go" is the seductive theme of "Our Lady of Perpetual Self-Loathing." Despite the remarkable parallels she unearths between her life and Cybele's mythical portrayal, the author, unlike Cybele, remains in control of her story. As she gazes through the clarifying lenses of midlife, motherhood, and a loving marriage to make peace with her past, Young provides an intellectually courageous road map for readers reconciling the cracks in their own family narratives.
Embedded with gems from other feminist icons, Desire Lines is the graceful work of a writer triumphantly exerting her right, "like a goddess," to bask in her "own radiance." --Shahina Piyarali
Shelf Talker: In this memoir-in-essays, a Cuban American journalist recounts learning of a ferocious and powerful ancient Roman mother goddess and the remarkable parallels between their life stories.