Mushmum

Illustration: Corinna Schmelter-Pourian
Text: Anna Job
Mushmum

Book design: Theresa Schwietzer

You’re like: »Don’t be so mushmum! «
I’m like: »What on earth is mushmum? «
And you go: »You know, when your mum bugs you but is also kind of funny at the same time? «

The sequel to Salty Milk is a poetic portrait of a mother-daughter relationship that turns the protagonist’s daily life into a hazardous mission to try and get a sense of her own self back in the midst of the chaotic antics of being a mother.

While, in their duets, only the briefest moments of harmonious togetherness occur, (now actually sung as trios, and already being jeopardized by thinking about another baby), the protagonist’s memories of freedom and living life in her own body are still there. And so is her longing. That longing for more. For going snowboarding again some time.

Corinna Schmelter-Pourian’s charming illustrations of the wild rollercoaster ride of parenthood are both sensitive and tongue-in-cheek.

Corinna Schmelter-Pourian: »In Mushmum, the female protagonist from Salty Milk maneuvers the slippery slope between being a mother and trying to stay true to herself now that her daughter is there. For their conversations, which, take the form of either duets or duels, I wanted to find images expressing the dynamics involved in them: movement, entanglement, closeness, doubt, chaos, and love have made their way into these digital drawings, which oscillate between zooming right into the situations, and offering surreal comments. Doodles of details that look like colored-pencil sketches and blurred, water-color-like spaces tell readers about the new type of togetherness portrayed, and take up the thread of the couple relationship we saw in part 1.«

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