My Seven Mothers
Making a Family in the Danish Women's Movement
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Seven women raise a child together while redefining their place in society at the beginning of the Women's Movement in Denmark in the 1970s
On New Year's Eve in Copenhagen in 1972, seven women had a child together: one gave birth and six others attended. They had met a year earlier at a feminist women's camp on a small island and now, with about twenty other women's liberationists, they occupied three dilapidated apartment buildings in the center of Copenhagen. One became the country's first Women's House, the nerve center of the Women's Movement in Denmark, and the other two were women-only communal living spaces that were Pernille Ipsen's first home. In this intimate portrait of life during the exhilarating early days of women's liberation in Scandinavia and dramatic social change around the globe, she tells the stories of these seven women, her seven mothers.
Recounting her mothers' history--from the passions and beliefs they shared to the political divisions over sexual identity that ultimately split them apart--Ipsen captures the individuality of each of her mothers as well as the common experiences that drew them together. As she deftly reflects the practical and emotional realities of her mothers' women-centered life, Ipsen presents an engrossing picture of intersecting lives that, half a century ago, raised questions we still grapple with today: What is a family? Who is a woman? And who gets to decide?
A chronicle of gender, sexuality, and feminism as it was constructed, contested, and lived, My Seven Mothers is an eye-opening account of the challenges and possibilities connected with liberation and radical social change during the 1970s. In this time of fierce struggles over family, sexuality, and child-rearing, it reminds us that new worlds are always possible.
About this Author
Pernille Ipsen was professor of gender and women's studies and history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for fifteen years and is now a full-time writer. The Danish-language version of this book, Et åbent øjeblik (An open moment), was published in 2020 and was awarded the Montana Prize for literature, one of Denmark's top literary prizes.
Tiina Nunnally is the award-winning translator of more than seventy books from the Scandinavian languages, including Sigrid Undset's epic tetralogy Olav Audunssøn, also published by the University of Minnesota Press. She was appointed Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for her contributions to Norwegian literature in the United States.
Reviews
"This book is a treasure, especially for a second-wave American feminist who was thrilled to learn of the boldness and courage of our Danish sisters at the very start of the 1970s women's movement. I can't recommend it highly enough."--Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments
"This memoir reads like a novel. It's about many things--feminism, collective living, family, and especially mothering, as well as the extraordinary optimism of Denmark in the 1970s. My Seven Mothers certainly is not all happiness and light, but that makes it even more moving, and as an American feminist I felt a sense of recognition infused with my own memories."--Linda Gordon, author of Seven Social Movements That Changed America
"Pernille Ipsen weaves together a beautifully written account of the lives and choices of the seven women who became her mothers in a time of profound social upheaval. Compulsively readable and historically insightful, My Seven Mothers reveals the spirit, courage, and tenacity required of the women who paved the way for second-wave feminist organizing in Denmark."--Birgitte Søland, author of Becoming Modern: Young Women and the Reconstruction of Womanhood in the 1920s
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