Matrescence, by S. C. Cline

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

To become in a world that hates you is complex and harrowing. Matresence explores the transition from girlhood into motherhood, as well as the many layers of balancing caregiving and ones self that permeate the lives of afab people, women, and girls globally. Misogyny is a universal language.

The majority of the world’s caretaking for children and the elderly is performed by women, some studies suggest up to 81%. How can you love yourself in a world that simultaneously needs you and hates you? That benefits from and requires your labor, but often refuses to give it the compensation, recognition, and praise that it deserves? How do our family systems reflect the misogyny that exists in our society and world at large? How does internalized misogyny impact the way we see ourselves, the way we see our sisters? Matrescence aims to explore these topics through poetry, through the lens of someone living it.

S. C. Cline grew up moving across the country as a military brat before becoming a young mother during college, two experiences that shaped her and her understanding of life deeply.  She is staunchly anti-imperialist, and adamant about advocating for reproductive rights and justice, housing first policy, and universal basic income, among other things. These themes can often be seen throughout her work. She was a finalist in Malone University’s Creative Writing Contest for the fictional short story "The Need to Feel Human", and made it to the final round of review in the Masters Review's Short Story Award for New Writers for her short story "Insane". She won first place at FIU's Student Literary Competition, Undergraduate Division, for her poem "Womb". Her poem "Guide to a Happy Life" was published in Drunk Monkey’s Literary Magazine. She graduated with her bachelors in English with a concentration in Creative Writing in 2020. She is currently a graduate student, a writer and photographer, and the mother of an incredible little girl. She prides herself most on her ability to be patient with children, pets, and literary magazine response times, and the fact that she can get a hula-hoop from her waist to her neck in one swift motion (seriously, it's true).