title: The Mother Trip: Hip Mama's Guide to Staying Sane in the Chaos of Motherhood (Live Girls)
author:  Ariel Gore 
description: In <i>The Mother Trip</i>, her follow-up to the cult classic, <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786882328/${0}">The Hip Mama Survival Guide</a></i>, Ariel Gore offers the kind of down-to-earth, truthful mothering conversations that you'd expect to have with a best girlfriend. In this collection of essays--some lasting one page, some stretching to five--Gore deftly spotlights the messy corners of motherhood: sleeplessness, depression, weird pregnancy dreams, the restless hunger for creativity, and the passionate love of children. This is comforting turf, especially for mothers who have felt patronized and bored by the numerous advice-laden mothering manuals on the market. Gore mixes straight talk with dreamier musings, using sensual details and thoughtful subtext to illuminate the spirituality of motherhood. (Her essay about being 19, pregnant, and living with a transient boyfriend in Italy is a masterfully crafted gem.) A sexy, political, and highly conscious mother who refuses to diminish herself, Gore is one of the best mothering role models to show up on the written page. In the essay "Children Need Interesting Mothers," she writes,
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  ALSO BY ARIEL GORE
  
  
  
  
  
  Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness
  
  
  
  
  
  Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City
  
  
  
  
  
  How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead
  
  
  
  
  
  The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show
  
  
  
  
  
  Whatever, Mom: _Hip Mama_ ’s Guide to Raising a Teenager
  
  
  
  
  
  Atlas of the Human Heart
  
  
  
  
  
  Breeder: Real Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers
  
  
  
  
  
  The Mother Trip: _Hip Mama_ ’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Chaos of
  Motherhood
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Hip Mama_ Survival Guide
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [1.](../Text/Contents.html#Contents_toc_2)
  
  
  
  
  
  [All About Eve](../Text/Contents.html#Contents_toc_2)
  
  
  
  
  
  I MUST HAVE BEEN TEN YEARS OLD WHEN MY MOTHER took me to see _Mommie Dearest_
  and then bragged to her friends that I’d laughed through the wire hanger
  scene.
  
  
  
  
  
  She riffed on the joke at home, applying that thick white facial mask and
  bursting into the dark of my bedroom with the wire hanger as I slept. I’d wake
  terrified, her slim figu