Mother Millennia will be an accumulating body of linked works on the subject of Mother, told from the perspective of as many different cultural backgrounds as possible, world-wide. On this site, all of these works will be called stories, and will come in a variety of forms, including memoirs, graphical narratives, fiction, oral histories, poetry, essays, video, and sounds. We are at the beginning stages and seek your participation.
More about the Project . . . . .
We anticipate gathering at least two thousand stories of Mother, related by people of as many different cultural backgrounds as possible. The stories will be a mix of fictionalized and straight memoirs, visual narrative, oral histories and/or any other media desired by the participants, and which can be supported by the World Wide Web. For instance, the recorded sound of your mother's laugh, or video of a dance or a birthday, or perhaps, a child's crayon portrait of her great-grandmother. Method of expression is limited only by the current state of the technology. The stories will be densely linked in a variety of methods, including geographical organization as well as subject threads such as childbirth, emigration, war, father, single mother, absence of mother, among many others.
We hope this website will be a living example of how difference can keep its own integrity and also overlap spheres as a linked world enters a new millennium. The underlying intent of this project is to explore how cultural diversity may work. Where we remember our mothers, or hear older relatives remember their mothers, is a human commonality that will never sound the same twice, but will always resonate with the memory and desire we all use to create ourselves. The stories will be painful and angry as well as happy and nostalgic. When the site opens, among its initial works will be stories of surviving the Armenian purge in the early part of this century; stories of growing up in New England in a large family; stories of the effects of war on mothers and families, locally and over centuries; a collection of letters to their mothers by a group of young Japanese women; and poems dedicated to mothers - and fathers - some gone, and some still with us.
We have a long way to go.
Participation in Mother Millennia will be possible at any time, now and after the website opens. If you are interested in becoming part of the initial body of linked works, contact me soon. If you wish to know more about Mother Millennia, just send me email with your questions.
Carolyn Guyer: caguyer@vassar.edu
