Mother Superior
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: March 20, 2017 1:42 PM | Last Updated: July 11, 2017
Saleema Nawaz
Mother Superior introduces Saleema Nawaz as a truly bold new voice in fiction. Gorgeous, sensuous prose and edgy, taboo-breaking subject matter combine to create a collection quite unlike anything else being published today.
A prostitute takes shelter with a group of young anarchists. A sister goes missing, mailing a trail of encoded postcards from destinations across the globe. The daughters of a Montreal bagel-shop owner navigate the tricky terrain of being young, Sikh, and female, one growing larger while the other fades. A woman watches with lust and longing as the object of her affections, her pregnant roommate, is pursued by an unsavoury suitor. And a precocious child spies on her adoptive mother, trying to grasp the secret of her mother's hidden obsession and of her own unexplained origins.
A prostitute takes shelter with a group of young anarchists. A sister goes missing, mailing a trail of encoded postcards from destinations across the globe. The daughters of a Montreal bagel-shop owner navigate the tricky terrain of being young, Sikh, and female, one growing larger while the other fades. A woman watches with lust and longing as the object of her affections, her pregnant roommate, is pursued by an unsavoury suitor. And a precocious child spies on her adoptive mother, trying to grasp the secret of her mother's hidden obsession and of her own unexplained origins.
The seven stories and two novellas in Mother Superior are a heady blend of misfits and mothers, of sisters and complex, mysterious others. Nawaz traces the scars left by family secrets and sings the complex, captivating language of lust and of love. (From Freehand Books)
From the book
There is a photograph of me and Kathleen in the rec room with Maggie, our dead baby sister. She is slumped in a car seat, swaddled in a pink flannel blanket, eyes and mouth sutured shut, every crease turned down with the heaviness of death. Kathleen and I are posed to either side, legs outstretched, hips pressed into the orange carpet. We have our chins in our hands, and Kathleen has one bare foot kicked up in the air. A couple of half-dressed Barbie dolls are visible off in the corner. A picnic-pose photo, like the one of us in Stanley Park, the checkered print of our two matching sundresses vivid against the striped grey blanket, our island in the sea of green grass.
From Mother Superior by Saleema Nawaz ©2008. Published by Freehand Books.