Weaning as a creative and critical reading

My research identifies an emerging trend among writers working on the borders of fiction and non-fiction for novels that function as aesthetic autobiographies. These works articulate ways in which the lived experience of the writer intersects with the artistic expression of these experiences. I examine novels by Rachel Cusk, Elena Ferrante, Sheila Heti, Jhumpa Lahiri and Deborah Levy as well as non-fiction texts by these authors. I argue that works by these women writers form a conversation of the kind Helene Cixous urges in her essay ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ and I view the resulting work as a female countercanon. Further, I argue that these works constitute a canon of motherhood, to which my own novel The Weaning might belong. As a way of furthering my understanding of my own creative practice I consider the exchange that occurs between writer and proxy, writer and text, writer and reader, reader and text as a process of literary weaning.