Death of a salesperson: Reflections on ‘American Murder’ and multilevel marketing

In the final analysis, Christopher Watts, garden-variety woman-hater, confirmed what we know about misogyny. There is a reason that women are more likely to die at the hands of their male partners. The patriarchy is never more deadly than when it is lying in wait beside us, in the hearts of the men we love most in the world.… Read More Death of a salesperson: Reflections on ‘American Murder’ and multilevel marketing

October 21, 2020 Rumbi Goredema Görgens1 Comment

A Woman’s Right to Choose

I have finally made peace with my birth story. It’s been a long journey. I know that my story is not the stuff of which natural birth fairy tales are made. Although I did (unknowingly) labour, and had the support of a wonderful doula, my birth was not ‘physiological’. I had a C-section that… Read More A Woman’s Right to Choose

January 24, 2020January 24, 2020 Rumbi Goredema Görgens4 Comments

Motherhood and Madness

Some of my favourite stories contain an uncontested truth we hold about motherhood: Mothers are at their best when they are well and whole. Broken mothers, mothers whose pathologies loom large in their lives and, by extension, the lives of their families, are bad news. They lead to fractured adolescence (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants),… Read More Motherhood and Madness

February 6, 2018 Rumbi Goredema GörgensLeave a comment

#MamahoodSoWhite

Motherhood. They say it takes a village, and let me tell you, ‘they’ were understating it. The truth is, it takes several villages, one for each child, and then one for each life stage your children will drag you through. One of the villages I have sought constant comfort from is that of fellow mothers. Woman… Read More #MamahoodSoWhite

November 24, 2017December 11, 2017 Rumbi Goredema Görgens2 Comments

No hood like this mamahood

The first year of motherhood. May I be so presumptuous as to write about it from within, before I have fully emerged, one-year-old and smashed (sugar and gluten free) birthday cake in each hand? I. The pulsating loneliness of it. I don’t quite know how to explain it. You won’t be alone, ever. If you’re… Read More No hood like this mamahood

November 18, 2015April 21, 2017 Rumbi Goredema GorgensLeave a comment

Birth Pains

“For the first time in my life, I understand the concept of home: it is not a refuge, not necessarily a snuggly place of warmth and cheery domesticity, not some essential rightness like the satisfying click that releases a lock, but rather a sense of peace with contradiction. It is a giving in, an acceptance,… Read More Birth Pains

March 9, 2015June 29, 2022 Rumbi Goredema GorgensLeave a comment

On What I did not Expect

I don’t know quite what I expected. For the longest time (and I know how lucky we are that for us, that only meant months, not years), we’d been planning for this pregnancy, working as hard as we could emotionally to conceive our miracle, fighting the despair that threatened to overwhelm anything positive about… Read More On What I did not Expect

October 11, 2014June 29, 2022 Rumbi Goredema Görgens2 Comments

Writing against the silence

I have a very happy, complicated relationship with writing. It is at once very personal, in the ways that only the places you can call home are, and very public, in the way that professional ambition can be. Writing has always been a place for me to take the pieces of my life, sorrowful… Read More Writing against the silence

June 9, 2014June 29, 2022 Rumbi Goredema GörgensLeave a comment

On mourning Maya Angelou, Ursula Le Guin and Failure

Last week was incredibly hard. Dr Maya Angelou died. I suppose I knew it was coming. And to be honest, it wasn’t a death I thought of with great dread, as I did whenever I contemplated President Nelson Mandela dying. Maya Angelou’s work and her story meant a great deal to me, but I didn’t expect… Read More On mourning Maya Angelou, Ursula Le Guin and Failure

June 2, 2014December 11, 2017 Rumbi Goredema GörgensLeave a comment

White Women’s Stories: A Late Review of The Help

I came to The Help*, the book, late. Long after the movie was released, and discussed ad nauseum, and had its Oscar glory, I have finally found it in myself to read the book. I bought the book a solid year ago, from an airport bookstore. I read a few chapters, stuck my boarding pass… Read More White Women’s Stories: A Late Review of The Help

September 23, 2013June 5, 2020 Rumbi Goredema GörgensLeave a comment

Rumbi Writes

Missives and Musings from the Middle of the Margins

Category: Women’s stories