Móðurmjólk
This story of women versus the State draws attention to Latvia’s bitter history from 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall, or more precisely: from 1969 – 1989.
A century has passed since Latvia officially became a sovereign state, and during half of that time, the country was under Soviet rule.
Nora Ikstena describes the Soviet era’s state of slavery, during which a mother slowly falls apart, at the same time as liberation nears the capital, Riga.
It is a bitter story, which now has been translated into 26 languages. The 26th being Faroese.
Ikstena describes an epoch unfathomable to our time, but which easily could happen again.
Two protagonists narrate the story – a nameless mother and her daughter. The mother refuses to breastfeed her new-born daughter, and later explains, “The milk was bitter. It carried all the absurdity and all the destruction. I protected my child against that.”
Because the daughter never was breastfed, she develops an aversion to milk, which all the school children were forced to drink. The ordeal with the milk is a characteristic trait of psychological injury, derived from a political oppression so absolute, that it has entered the body, the soul.
And thus, we follow the two.