Madeline ffitch
English Ph.D. fiction candidate Madeline ffitch published a nonfiction essay in the latest issue of Granta. The essay, “When We Fight, We Have Our Children With Us,” has been exceptionally well-received and widely shared on social media and elsewhere.
Excerpt:
“… Friends ask me about being a parent who also remains politically involved. They ask me what it’s like to bring my kids with me to demonstrations, meetings and trainings, to breastfeed while facing a cop in riot gear, to be peed on by my baby at a direct-action training, to carry my toddler piggyback while marching through the streets. They want to know what it was like to bring my two young children to Standing Rock.
…The idea that political work is for young, idealistic, childless adults is one way to keep such work carefully controlled, to cast it as exceptional, a hobby for the privileged few, when of course it’s neither. It’s ordinary and necessary. So is parenting.”
ffitch is the author of a collection of short stories, Valparaiso, Round the Horn (Publishing Genius Press). More information about her work is available at her personal website.
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