And that was an instinct I saw in myself and also didn't like as I kind of moved into stay-at-home parenting. And I was struck at some moments where I thought, like - she does something that I actually don't like that women do, which is to dismiss connection with other moms because they're busy trying to basically distance themselves from the idea of motherhood. I mean, why is there not more sort of body horror written about pregnancy and motherhood? But I wasn't interested in this just being a sort of pure horror book because I thought there was a lot more possibility in the body horror trope for moving beyond horror into something that is ultimately hopeful.ĬORNISH: And I notice fundamentally this character is incredibly lonely.ĬORNISH: She is quite literally a lonely animal. It doesn't seem like more of us have approached this. How do we come into our womanhood, into our motherhoods in a way that is empowering rather in a way that feels like we're abandoning ourselves?ĬORNISH: And I'm surprised I haven't seen this analogy more often because, obviously, when it comes to being pregnant, to giving birth and what happens after, your body goes through so much transformation.ĬORNISH: Like, it's been the province basically of Ridley Scott in "Alien."ĬORNISH. And this is really about the mother moving from her girlhood into her womanhood and doing it perhaps not all that elegantly. I think we have a lot of coming-of-ages in our lives. And I really do consider this story a sort of coming-of-age story. Right? - with moving from childhood to adulthood. They're often about the transition that comes.ĬORNISH. When I think back to other stories I've read in this vein, they're often about puberty. And part of the work was to say, OK, well, what's the truth? How can I tell the truth? What's the truth of what happened? And is there a story that I can tell to sort of transform this rage into something productive and empowering rather than something that's sort of eating me up inside?ĬORNISH: It's interesting. And I felt - I think the biggest feeling was that I felt tricked - you know, that somehow the stories I had been told were false. I was going to be able to feel fulfilled in my career and in my art and also have a child.Īnd when I found myself in this position - a stay-at-home mom, my husband on the road every week - I thought to myself, how did I arrive here?ĬORNISH: It sounds like you thought you were entitled to it. You know, I thought it was going to be this endeavor my husband and I did together equally. To a certain extent I was because that had not been my vision of motherhood. YODER: I really wanted to explore what I was going through in early motherhood, this sort of rage at where I found myself, this rage at the structures of society that I felt had kind of led me to that point.ĬORNISH: Were you surprised that you were angry? Like the mother in the story, she quit a dream job to stay home with her new son. Rachel Yoder told me it came out of her experience. It's called "Nightbitch." It's a horrifying and frankly hilarious look at the beautiful and infuriating experience of motherhood and what happens when a mother literally howls in protest. Now, the title - we want to pause and warn you because it contains profanity. YODER: And then it kind of is off to the races after that, once she realizes what's going on, can't resist it any longer and then is sort of out roaming the neighborhood at night.ĬORNISH: And the novel gets much wilder from there. YODER: This desire for raw meat, an insatiable hunger.ĬORNISH: The mother is turning into a dog.
But none of them quite explain what is happening to the unnamed mother in Rachel Yoder's new novel. There are all kinds of places where new parents can get advice - books, advice, columns, podcasts.
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