March 19, 2024
The Afterpains, by Anna Julia Stainsby
Anna Julia Stainsby’s debut The Afterpains has been a hot topic of conversation in one of my group chats lately, so I was happy to get my hands on a copy and check it out for myself. It’s the story of three women and their respective experiences of motherhood and loss woven together with those of the people who love them, a testament to love and friendship, first and foremost, and the transformative possibilities of both. It’s the story of Isaura, whose teenage pregnancy was part of a long family history that seemed like a curse, and how she had to leave her daughter behind in Honduras while she travelled to New York to earn a living to support her child. Nineteen years later, the two are living a pretty good life in Toronto and it seems like daughter Mivi—on a cusp of heading to university to pursue her dream of being a doctor—has managed to defy the odds of the matrilineal curse, which Mivi is particularly grateful for because she happens to be in love with Eddie and the second part of the curse necessitates the man involved dying suddenly. Meanwhile, Eddie’s mother, Rosy, is still steeped in the grief of the daughter she’d lost to SIDS twenty years before, a trauma that has kept her too afraid to ever get close to her son, to allow herself the possibility of such a loss ever again. This is a story of grief, love and loss, what it means to have a child who is far away, or no longer alive, or growing up and away from you, which is just as it should be, but also excruciating and wondrous at once.
