Reconciling motherhood and identity in “The Cracks We Bear”
By hola | Published | No Comments
On April 16, Catalina Infante, author of “The Cracks We Bear,” and translator Michelle Mirabella joined us for our second charla. Watch the recording of the live reading.
As with many things associated with women, the journey of motherhood has always been a private affair. Though not as stigmatized as other human processes like menstruation or sexuality, motherhood is sold to us from a young age as a very specific fantasy of beauty and wonder that innately comes to us. In just over 100 pages, Catalina Infante’s “The Cracks We Bear,” which was translated to English by Michelle Mirabella, spins this rose-tinted fantasy on its head and explores the unsung intimacies of becoming a mother in all its raw glory.
The novel follows newly minted mother Laura as she moves back into her childhood home to raise her newborn, Antonia. Terror and uncertainty of what to do consume Laura from the very first page, but what’s felt strongest of all is the grief for her late mother, Esther, not being there with her.
Interwoven memories of Laura’s upbringing map their complicated relationship like “cracks on a jug,” as Infante puts it, none of which were ever given closure before Esther passed away from cancer. These unhealed wounds fester along with new ones as Laura drowns under postpartum, the struggles of raising a child, and the reconciliation of her clashing roles as both a failing daughter and mother.
Laura and Esther’s relationship is refreshingly tragic to watch unspool — not because they hate each other, but because they never found a way to properly bond. A vocal communist along with her then-husband, Esther was exiled from Chile during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship and lived in Cuba for years before giving birth to Esther in France. Although she eventually returned to Chile with Laura after the collapse of the dictatorship, the time spent isolated from her home and family resulted in Esther guarding herself from everyone. This included Laura, who internalized her mother’s guarded identity and affection as her own personal failings.
“I began to think that being my mother was something that drained her, that if she’d been able to stay in that past, she would have,” Laura states during a trip to Cuba with Esther. “I wonder if all of us daughters, all of us mothers, have that doubt. Perhaps I never really knew her.”
The two were unable to reconcile their issues before Esther passed away, leaving Laura with grief for the woman she never knew. Though Laura tried for so long to ignore those feelings of rage and pain, moving back into Esther’s home to raise her own daughter drags those skeletons back out of the closet.
On top of the grief, raising Antonia is a herculean labor. In a society that is just beginning to have conversations about the reality of childbirth and the postpartum period, Infante’s depictions of both hold no punches as Laura stumbles through the fear-numbing journey of everyday life with a newborn. Stripped of her autonomy and any semblance of previous control, Laura calls herself and all mothers “zombies” who must numb themselves to the world out of self-preservation.
Laura comes to realize that motherhood can consume one’s entire identity. Though I am childless, I am a daughter; there is an inherent guilt we are born with, knowing what our mothers sacrificed — in every sense of the word — to carve a human being out of themselves. Seeing Laura struggle with the sleepless nights, the collapsing marriage, anxiety, depression, and the grief of her life before this, I found myself thinking of my own mother, wondering just how much of her identity she has allowed herself to keep.
Motherhood and exploring her past also recontextualize Laura’s understanding of Esther.
Though she will never fully know her mother or heal the wounds Esther’s walled-off passivity left behind, Laura learns to make peace with this truth instead. As Laura takes Antonia to visit Esther’s childhood home at the end of the novel, she contemplates this: “I’ve been carrying something broken ever since I was a mere extension of my mother’s womb. A small fissure that compels us to silence, like a black hole that’s there to remind us of how distance is always looming … But Esther cannot have only been this; no woman is just a mother in silence. The door she closed between us concealed another woman, a way of being or a place to which she never allowed herself to return.”
The ache of such loss is devastating for both Laura and the reader, but it’s also the first step for Laura to find the strength to move forward. She can learn to accept their broken bond for what it was, the same way she learned to be the right mother for Antonia. “The Cracks We Bear” is a breathtaking story that will sit in your bones long after you finish.
– Written by Michelle Benitez
– Copy edited by Valerie Izquierdo and Kami Waller
Michelle Benitez (she/her) is a first-generation Mexican American from Naples, Fla. She graduated from Florida State University with a double major in editing, writing, and media, and Spanish. During her time at Florida State, she developed a passion for text production and publications that promote Latine voices and challenge the current publishing industry’s market. Michelle aspires to one day become a developmental editor.
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