Black Milk

Description

There is no truth as pure as the whiteness of milk, so why has milk become black? Under this striking title, the captivating novelist, Alif Shafaq, confronts us with a great secret, as in The Forty Secrets of Love—her most famous and successful novel, translated into numerous languages. In this secret, the novelist describes a dark experience that doesn’t necessarily affect all new mothers, but when it affects a novelist like Shafaq, it transforms into a state of insight and awakening witnessed by all, its light reaching their souls and affecting them with some of its power. Just as the whiteness of milk is a symbol of motherhood, blackness is not only a symbol of writing and ink, but also of the blackness of the negative, depressing thoughts that haunt some mothers immediately after giving birth, pushing them into a dark tunnel where they struggle with their anxieties, ghosts, and questions that bloom in their chests, stifling the flow of their milk-filled breasts and their vibrant souls. They then search for broad doors of understanding that will lead them to the plains of creativity, where they can share their experiences with all of humanity.