Reviewed by Tom Griffen
Mother’s Day In the Empire State Or, An Answer to the Arraignment of Women
by Constantia Munda
Free-Grace Press
May 2024, Hardcover, 274 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1732166912
So you want to know a thing or two about this “Artist’s Book” (which is how the book self-identifies, BTW). You want to read a why-you-should-check-this-out sort of thing on part two of a five novel series illustrating Free Grace’s (the publisher’s) world view and philosophies. Well then, give your attention over to the opening section—the Publisher’s Preface. Because that’s all the review you’re going to need.
The Preface is more than a thorough snapshot of what’s inside. It’s also a mirror that offers would-be-readers a dose of honest self-reflection, introspection, and possibility, as in, “…if you’re okay with ghosts, anything is possible here.” It also shares some necessary context to get things a’rollin’.
Mother’s Day in the Empire State Or, An Answer to the Arraignment of Women is an inspired novel, a satirical rebuttal to British misogynist Joseph Swetnam’s 1615 pamphlet titled, The Arraignment of Leuud, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women. In short, this narrative compares the relationship between society and mother and child, then deems it abusive. It designs a metaphoric, blood curdling parallel between “mothers” (the more powerful) and the overarching societal mistreatment of “children” (the less powerful). It’s an exposé on the defiling of what’s sacred.
Mother’s Day in the Empire State, Or An Answer to the Arraignment of Women will give the reader the intelligence, the illustrations, and data to prove that American “Motherhood” is child abuse.” Oooh. I know that line got ya!
The book is narrated by a fictional woman named Constantia “Connie” Munda. Her name, in Latin, translates to constant perseverance. With a minor twist it becomes the Spanish, con mundo, meaning, with the world.
Connie is a single mother with two children, a veteran military intelligence officer, and a child protection services (CPS) agent. She investigates instances of child abuse and writes a collection of depositions that highlight two women’s alleged infractions on a Mother’s Day in (fictional) Allegheny County, New York, in northern Appalachia.
Readers are told that Connie’s stories are true, but also untrue. That they are correct, but also incorrect. Such statements, rather than dulling the issues, amplify and expand the brutalities. They deepen familiarity and subtly encourage readers to apply it more widely—to the state, to the military, to society’s role in suicide rates, to capitalism, crappy bosses, bad people, and bad men, to name a few. Connie’s cadence is winding and oblique. But there’s value in her serpentine discourse—it humanizes her concerns. Everyone knows someone like Connie.
Mother’s Day in the Empire State depicts Connie as the granddaughter of Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother’s Day, which, (this may come as a surprise), “was originally an Anti-War day for mothers to gather and set up political opposition to WAR, because war only kills a mother’s child.”
Before Anna Jarvis died in 1948, she struggled against the pervasive commercialization of her holiday. Gifts of chocolates, greeting cards, flowers—all merely capitalist diluters of her original sentiment. “A printed card,” she once said, “means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.” Her stand on chocolates was a similar finger shake: “You take a box to Mother and then eat most of it yourself.” Anna Jarvis didn’t have time for bullshit. And her supposed granddaughter, Constantia, didn’t fall far from the tree.
As for the novel’s style, a line in the preface says, “In lyrical algebra the novel has an unexpected long opening, then goes into repeat for the majority of the novel…and then the novel ends quickly with a deceptive closure.” Are you still stuck on “lyrical algebra?” I bet you are!
Lyrical algebra uses songs and rhyme to teach a mathematical equation. “The novel’s chapter’s algebraic rhyming structure is as follows: A-B-A-B-A-C-D-E-D-E-D-E-D-E-D-E-D-E-D-E-C.” Which may very well be a cryptic mathematical, literary scheme that’s veils the underlying, and more direct question, Why are we goddamned killing our very own children?
There’s also this nugget: “Free-Grace Press believes the worst reading is to have prose with no answers, no expected rhythm, or an unorthodox measure, yet ambiguity and unanswered questioning drive the pulse and rhythm of this “Mother’s Day” novel.” Every novel benefits from some incongruity, doesn’t it? I mean, who doesn’t love a peculiar detail! And don’t the best readings leave readers with empty spaces needing to be filled? Do they not ripple widely and outward to create fresh and new ripplings rushing away from the source?
This book is a serious rippler. And readers, dare I say, will be left holding a naked baby higher and higher above their heads as they step deeper and deeper onto the rocky bottom of a raging waterway. Footing will inevitably grow faulty. Vision impaired. And eventually they’ll be submerged, needing to come up for air.
And when they do, they’ll find themselves sitting on the banks. They’ll remember that thing they read somewhere about how anything and everything can be learned by watching a river. This book is that river! Readers needn’t go anywhere to find what’s imperative and necessary. It’s all right here!
The omniscient river entices us to stare at its movement and listen to its flows and thuds. It begs us to witness an ever-changing, yet similar swirling curl of mesmerizing water tripped up on a cobble (whose placement is, of course, temporary). Oh there’s so much we could talk about here, so please pardon my meandering. Like Connie, I am thinking in ripples. Like her, it seems, I am rivering.
Mother’s Day in the Empire State claims that it, “…is not just for the literate, but for the illiterate. Non-English readers are also not excluded either, as all of Connie Munda’s fifteen original illustrations and/or watercolor paintings are included in this novel [the “People’s Exhibits”], and they alone express and describe this novel’s thesis in our universal visual language.” How cool is that! Universal visual language! My “review” leans closely into these fifteen works and shares, in rippling snippets, the narrative arc they convey with precise imagery.
People’s Exhibit A – Mr. Appleton’s Office: Connie’s boss evokes an air of Empire importance. His walls (of course) are decked out with crappy paintings by Thomas Kinkade, the painter of light.
People’s Exhibit B – Mr. Appleton With RPI Sweatshirt Misprinted: Connie’s boss works past retirement. He’s a balding, fat, divorced, an angry bureaucrat. His maroon Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (reserved for casual Fridays) covers his “mommy milk-toast body.”
People’s Exhibit C – Gas Station Man: Connie encounters this man working the desk of a gas station that has cow bells on its doorknob. He’s wearing a dirty bathrobe and a peacock boa while tuning in to a black and white TV.
People’s Exhibit D – Plato’s “Pay-o-la”: Connie sits before a Seneca Nation casino’s one-armed bandit that attempts to entice her with “seizure-inducing delirium” with dizzying graphics depicting “Plato with rippling muscles, a hard-on, and buxom babes.” Such an aggressive seducer.
People’s Exhibit E – A Closet of Pocketbooks Worth One Million Dollars ($1,000,000): This child abuse target, Madeline McHugh’s closet. She’s a “perverted subhuman,” whose Judeo-Christian dreams didn’t quite play out. Sad trombone.
People’s Exhibit F – Barbara Dalton at Dawn in the Casino Parking Lot: Barbara is the other woman Connie is investigating. She finds her in the back of the casino parking lot next to the dumpsters. Barbara’s son, Chris, is serving time in Attica for raping their neighbor.
People’s Exhibit G – The Luxurious Basement and/or The Fuck-Pit Coliseum: This is Madeline’s exorbitantly furnished basement where her snotty daughter Christa gets it on with her boyfriend Patrick until he remembers it’s Mother’s Day. He freaks out because he hasn’t bought her a card yet.
People’s Exhibit H – Reading the Bible in Whitey’s Toilet: Barbara, hiding out in the casino crapper, grits her teeth as she reads a Bible decorated with a “Fuck You” sticker on the back cover. The smoke from her spliff morphs into a crown of thorns above her head.
People’s Exhibit I – Christmas Card Signed by GMO Children: Five genetically created kids, all with matching dead-blue eyes (a trait that cost their “parents” $41,000 per child) signed their thick “X” signatures on the covers and backs of holiday cards. Their marks resemble swastikas.
People’s Exhibit J – Vending Machine Nutrition: Barbara eats her meals from a vending machine that gives gives gives the body just what it wants and needs. Energy! Nutrition! Yay! The sound of wrappers compliments the sound of pinballs, slot machines, and lost life savings.
People’s Exhibit K – The Fruit of Madeline’s Garden: Madeline’s Vogue lauds the benefits of excrement, so she encourages her dogs to defecate in her garden. Her housekeeper makes to steal the garden’s yield, but she only finds beetles and varmints. So she he fills Madeline’s basket with fruit from the market. Everyone is happy.
People’s Exhibit L – The Raft of Poverty: Barbara’s porch is likened to painting of a catastrophic raft of cannibalizing sailors, The Raft of Medusa. Connie’s severe watercolor depiction is of mothers cannibalizing their families and children. In the background, busted up cars, non-op wash machines, and thousands and thousands of beer cans.
People’s Exhibit M – A Bowl of Phones Worth Thirty-Six Thousand Dollars ($36,000): A veritable planet of various electric communication devices averaging $878 per unit. Madeline’s daughter Margaret will call—on which one, however, remains a mystery. Ringing causes confusion, but hey, it’s not family friendly if money isn’t being spent!
People’s Exhibit N – The Mother’s Day Moo-Moo Demolition Derby: 1976 Pinto (Barbara) vs. 2021 Mercedes (Madeline) battle to score the last available gas pump. Local women video the fracas as it escalates into full scale war that ends in cigarettes being smoked sensually and visions of the Virgin Mary.
People’s Exhibit O – Letter from Little Sister X: The last known letter to Grandma Jarvis, founder of Mother’s Day. From an orphan girl who included a nickel to help get ol’ Gram out of the sanitarium. “Are you one of us? The forgotten? A nobody?…I hope your prison is better than mine,” X writes.
So there you have it. Two women. Two ways of moving through the world. Lots in common, and also nothing in common. Connie expertly organizes her investigation—all the clashes of conflict—and allows for readers to decide for themselves if there’s truth to any of it. She lets them decide, for themselves, whose fault it is. Is it the state’s? The citizen’s? Perhaps war, imperialism, or pop culture is at fault? Or religion? Maybe false identities? Or Pink Floyd? Or Gas prices? Can the finger be pointed at men, in general? White men? Misogynists and patriarchal bros with puffed up chests? Perhaps it’s the Fascists and Nazis? Or is it, as the novel suggests, the fault of women? Mothers? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s actually nobody’s fault because it’s everyone’s fault.
Which brings us back to Connie. Constantia Munda, a.k.a. Constant perseverance (with the world). She’s sweating it out. Dealing with shit. Holding things down while trying to get a bead. Connie is just one person taking the time to look closely at things. At herself, her purpose, her identity, and her ancestry—which is all a noble attempt to find some answers. Cheers to constant perseverance with the world! Cheers to Connie!
There’s a line in the Preface that proclaims, “Our books make the reader an active participant in the novel.” Which suggests that readers are not able to, not allowed to, sit back and watch. If that happens to be their intention, well, they are complicit complicit complicit! It never actually says this in the book, but if you rearrange the letters of other words into new words, you can very easily make this statement appear on the very same page, thus making it true. So handy!
And finally, there’s this gem in the book’s final paragraph: “The hanging silver and gold doorbells jingle and jangle against the glass door as it slams shut, and I, too, go out into the purple, black, and blue Appalachian night. I think to myself…” [WAIT FOR IT] “Constant Perseverance”—though I sort of expected it to say, instead, as a rally of hope and song and a twinge of lightheartedness, What a wonderful world.
But no. The ending is not happy. It’s merely true. We will all walk outside into a bruise. Connie’s story is ours.
About the reviewer: Tom Griffen is a writer, artist, and adventurer based in Carrboro, NC. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. His work has appeared in PANK Magazine, The Rumpus, Tupelo Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Prairie Schooner and others. Follow him on Instagram at @tomgriffen.