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Both Melinda Yale’s book, What Mom Says and Ewa Monika Zebrowski’s My Mother, Myself are reflections of their own mother/daughter relationships. That these two books can be read in light of the story of Persephone and Demeter speaks about the archetypical nature of the two mythical characters.

Although not inspired by the story of Demeter and Persephone, Yale portrays a mother/daughter relationship of mythical proportions. Like Demeter, the mother in this story has outsized emotions.

What Mom Says is illustrated with an array of brightly colored cartoonish shapes, which contrast sharply with the text written within the shapes. The narrative – part coming-of-age memoir, part quotes – is jarring and sometimes shocking, but not without a tinge of black humor. Yale’s vivid shapes bring to mind such things as rutabagas, larvae, balloons and sputniks. They are at once weird and wonderful, repellent and delightful, and paired with the riveting text compellingly tell the story of her difficult relationship with her mother.

What Mom Says
Melinda Yale

Pull the strip attached to the front cover of Mari Eckstein Gower’s spectacular one-of-a-kind artists’ book and the story of Persephone springs forth with a terrific visual bounty. Based on the Caeretan black-figure hydriai, c.6th century BCE, with a nod to Picasso’s classical drawings after these vases, Gower fashions sumptuous illustrations that are resplendent with exquisite decoration and embellished detail. Like the hydriai, the illustrations employ an intensely colored palette supported by solid blacks, the coloring changing in harmony with the shifting seasons as Persephone’s tale moves through the continual cycle of growth, dormancy, and re-growth. Artfully worked into the design are patches of text that tell the Persephone story through Gower’s voice. The figural interpretations can be quite lyrical, as demonstrated in the section showing Persephone’s curvilinear form huddled under the winter-dormant earth, prophetically holding within the

confines of her body the flowers that will emerge in spring. This delicate figure is watched by Cerberus, the gigantic three-headed hound who stands guard at the gates of Hades to prevent the ghosts of the dead from leaving the underworld. Gower has created a ferocious beast, its stiff body agitated by a row of intertwined serpents set within his belly.
Gower captures the emotional power of the myth by incorporating each character’s viewpoint: Demeter’s outrage and despair, Hades’ devotion and desire, and Persephone’s conflicting feelings. In the artist’s words, “Poor Persephone is caught in the middle of a dispute between two people who love her. I like to imagine that she ate the pomegranate seeds on purpose so she could spend half the year as a beloved wife and queen, and the other half with her mother.”

Persephone
Mari Eckstein Gower