The Motherload: Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood by Sarah Hoover

Please join us for an event on Wednesday, January 22nd to celebrate the release of The Motherload: Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood by Sarah Hoover. For this event, Sarah will be joined in conversation by Christie Tate.

Please note: This event is free to attend, but registration is required. Register for this event at the link below. Masks are required for all in-person events at W&CF.

“The Motherload is for all the women who wish someone had told them the truth about motherhood. Honest, unapologetic, and brutally funny…it’s about developing the strength to care for yourself and, thereby, learning to care for another.” —Stephanie Danler, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetbitter
An intimately honest memoir about motherhood that dares to ask, what happens when “what to expect when you’re expecting” turns out to be months of rage, anguish, brain fog, and a total surrender of sex, career, and identity.
“The kid was objectively a tiny worm, even worse, a worm with my nose.” Welcome to Sarah Hoover’s unflinching take on motherhood and its expectations in which the beatific narrative women have been fed—one of immediate connection to your child followed by a joyful path of maternal discovery—turns out to be not quite true. In The Motherload, Hoover provides a candid, funny, and sobering look at the journey women undertake as expectant mothers and wives from the early days of pregnancy through labor and beyond.
Like most of us, Sarah Hoover grew up imagining a certain life for herself—career, love, marriage, children—and when Hoover moved from Indiana to New York City to study art history, the life she’d imagined began falling into place. She got her degree, landed a job in a gallery, made friends, and went on some exceptionally bad dates. She also met interesting artists, one of whom became her future husband (a whirlwind romance, theirs, exciting even with its imperfections). But when Hoover got pregnant, the life she imagined began to unravel.
She felt like an imposter in her own body. She grew distant from her friends and husband. She suffered from anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame. She also experienced trauma at the hands of one of her doctors—a stark trigger. And eventually, when her son was born, there was no… joy. Instead, she felt “disoriented, lonely, and like none of my clothes fit.” Why was she seeing and hearing things that weren’t there? Why was she so angry and miserable when she had everything she thought she wanted? Why was the life she’d built falling apart?
It took her months to discover that she was suffering from severe postpartum depression. And it took even longer to trace all the threads that came to inform her experience.
At its core, The Motherload is about learning to forgive yourself for not being what you’ve been told you must be and for not loving the way you’ve been told you should. It’s about the uniquely female experience of constantly grappling with expectation versus reality, no matter your circumstance, and a rejection of the cultural idea of the mother as a perfect being. It is a moving, exciting, roller coaster ride, and a propulsive addition to the canon of women’s literature.

Sarah Hoover holds a master’s degree in cultural theory from Columbia and a BA in art history from NYU. Her writing has been featured in Mother Tongue, The Strategist, and Vogue. The Motherload is her first book.

Christie Tate is an essayist and author who writes creative nonfiction and memoir. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Group, which was a Reese’s Book Club selection and has been translated into 19 languages. She is also the author of B.F.F.-- A Memoir of Friendship Lost & Found. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. She grew up in Dallas and now lives in Chicago with her family.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email [email protected].

Event Venue

Women & Children First, 5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, United States