This week we are exploring motherhood and family in honor of Mother's Day (Sunday, May 10) and the International Day of Families(Friday, May 15). Holly Bounds Jackson, Director of Content and Operations at SCETV Lowcountry (Beaufort), joins us this week to offer book recommendations.
Las Voces del Lowcountry
Elsa Méndez participated in the "Las Voces del Lowcountry" oral history project to discuss her decision to leave her home in Mendoza, Argentina in search of a better future for her son in Charleston, South Carolina. With the support of her family and kindness from strangers, Méndez was able to make the difficult transition. The Citadel Oral History Program received a grant from SC Humanities in 2013 to support the recording of interviews and to host community programs.
Nuestro Futuro
Extended families separated by immigration yearn for contact. Nuestro Futuro is a documentary supported by SC Humanities that follows five young Hispanics living in South Carolina. The project offers insight into cultural identity issues and the realities of immigration. Dive into Nuestro Futuro, Part 5: Divided Homes (10:32).
Voices of the Santee Delta
As a part of the Voices of the Santee Delta Oral History Project, Henrietta Smalls discussed growing up in Germantown, South Carolina with no electricity or running water. She talked about her and her mother's work planting gardens, cooking over wood fires, tending farm animals, and washing clothes. The Voices of the Santee Delta Oral History Project was supported by SC Humanities with a Major Grant.
Poems About Motherhood
The Poetry Foundation's collection of Poems About Motherhood features a wide-ranging selection about the many aspects of motherhood. Their goal was to offer a diversity of poems about the rich, messy, overwhelming experience. The poems offer a sense of mutual sense of joy and struggle while countering the ongoing idealization of motherhood in American culture. Explore the full collection here.
Williamina Patton Fleming was born in Dundee, Scotland. After emigrating to Boston, most sources claim that her husband abandoned her, leaving her pregnant and alone in a new country. To support herself and her son she took a position as a maid for Edward Charles Pickering, Director of the Harvard Observatory. Pickering, recognizing her intelligence, soon moved her into the Observatory and taught her how to analyze glass photographic plates of the stars. In her 30-year career, Fleming discovered 10 novae, 310 variable stars, and 59 gaseous nebulae. As a single mother, having put her son through MIT, Fleming died of pneumonia on May 21, 1911, at the age of 54. Learn more about Fleming's incredible story.
Unsung women who changed America — that’s what UNLADYLIKE2020 is all about. SC Humanities is pleased to be partnering with this project and to share the stories of 26 daring women who helped shape our world.
We are gearing up to record Season 3 of By The River for SCETV. Once again we have an exciting list of authors on the lineup. Often when I see people out they’ll ask me about my conversations with the authors and whether they should pick up a certain book. I always tell them- and I mean it—that each author I have interviewed so far has captivated my attention for some particular reason. And the one I typically talk about most is Bren McClain and her book One Good Mama Bone. There’s no denying she put her heart and soul into that story and our conversation about it nearly brought us both to tears. This book won’t only hit a soft spot with mothers, but for anyone who cares for something so deeply it’s almost as if it’s their child.
Just Between Us: Mother & Daughter: A No-Stress, No-Rules Journal
I was recently gifted this book that is meant for mothers and daughters to complete together. Each of us gets every other page to fill in the blank, answer questions or draw the picture that it asks. My 7-year-old daughter and I have had so much fun with this and I’ve been surprised by some of the answers. Once it’s entirely filled in and can be read like a book, the question will be, who gets to keep it?
