The challenges facing mothers in the twenty-first century go well beyond tantrum control and potty training. Camille Peri and Kate Moses, the founding editors of Salon.com's "Mothers Who Think" column and the subsequent anthology of the same name, have once again compiled a selection of intimate and fiercely honest essays on the profound issues that affect women and their children. Because I Said So offers thirty-three unique perspectives on motherhood from such writers as Janet Fitch, Mariane Pearl, Ayelet Waldman, Mary Roach, Rosellen Brown, Mary Morris, and Ana Castillo. Witty and wise, their stories range from the anguish of giving up child custody to the guilt of having sex in an era of sexless marriages; from learning to love the full-speed testosterone chaos of boys to raising girls in a pervasively sexualized culture; from facing racial and religious intolerance to surviving cancer and rap simultaneously. This is the collective voice of real mothers in all their humor, anger, vulnerability, grace, and glory.

Because I Said So
33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race, and Themselves

Chapter One

The Scarlet Letter Z

Asra Q. Nomani

Ugly whispers about me began long before I found myself,in the summer of 2004, standing before a massive green door thatled into the mosque in the town that I have known as my homesince I was a girl of ten. The door stood in front of me like anentryway into my own personal hell.

My local community of Muslims -- interconnected via the Internet with like-minded Muslims globally -- had rebuked me for giving birth to a child out of wedlock and living without shame with this fact, then writing about it publicly to defend the rights of women who were quietly punished for similar cultural trespasses in the far corners of the world. From the pulpit of ourmosque, a Ph.D. student called unchaste women "worthless." In the grocery store, an elder I had called "uncle" since my childhood days averted his eyes from mine when I passed him in the fruit section. A professor told his children to stay away from me. My family lost Muslim friendships of thirty years, relationships considered solid since we first made this town our home.

Criticism and condemnation seemed to come from everywhere:a Charleston, West Virginia, man wrote that I should stayin the shadows: "It would have been best if the facts of [yourson's] birth had not been so callously flaunted ... Do you HAVEto rub it in?" When a Muslim immigrant said I was unfit to be aleader because of my unwed motherhood, an American convert responded, "... why not just make her wear a big red Z on all ofher clothes, for zina, so everyone can steer clear and judge her forthe rest of her life, like the adulteress in The Scarlet Letter?"Finally, the men at my mosque were putting me on trial, trying tobanish me -- a symbolic exile from our community.

It was my mother, Sajida, strong and supportive and curious,who first sought out Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel. "You are HesterPrynne," she told me when she closed the cover. I read it next, andshe was right: the elders of our mosque were like the seventeenthcenturyPuritans in The Scarlet Letter who sentenced a singlemother, Hester Prynne, to forever wear the letter A on her chest aspunishment for the adultery in which she had conceived a child.

Three hundred years later, I was being subjected to the sameexperience of religious scrutiny, censure, and community rejectionin a country that was founded on religious freedom. But could Igarner anywhere near the strength of Hester's inner character inthe inquisition that I faced? To walk into my house of worshipwas to invite the demons of hatred into my life. With a deepbreath I opened the door, my son scampering inside ahead of me.

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray,steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearinghoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of awooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered withoak, and studded with iron spikes.

An assembly of my community sat, mostly men with beards,crocheted prayer caps, and dim-colored pants and T-shirts; otherswere clean-shaven, intermixed with women hooded with hijab, thehead covering of Muslim women. I tucked my jet black hair into thehood of the oversize black, hooded jacket I had won in a beach volleyballtournament in my younger days. Like Hester most of her life,hiding her lush hair under a cap, I was making myself asexual in thisworld in which my sexuality had become the evidence of my criminality.But my jacket had the label "Six Pack," insider volleyball lingofor the power of a hard-driven spike hitting an opponent's face.

I took a seat at one end of the cafeteria-style tables arranged ina U. At the head of the table, a gray-haired, bearded, casuallydressed elder, a university professor, got down to business. He pulledstrips of paper with names typed on them out of a plastic Ziplocsandwich bag. He read the names on the slips of paper as if he werethe master of ceremonies at a carnival drawing winners for raffleprizes. In fact, these were the names of those who would be the juryfor the secret tribunal that the professor and the other leaders of themosque had initiated against me. The judges at this "Ziploc justice"trial would be the five-member board of trustees that ran themosque.

My crimes? In October 2003, I had walked through the frontdoor of my mosque on the first night it opened, my infant son,Shibli, on my hip, instead of taking the rear entrance designatedfor women. I sat in the secluded women's balcony that night, buteleven days later, I walked through the front door and into themain hall, which is reserved for men. Then, when the mosque elderswouldn't meet with me, I wrote about the rights deniedwomen in mosques such as mine, drawing attacks on my familyand myself. But questioning the leadership and policies of themosque wasn't enough to earn the full wrath of my community.My greatest offense was being an unwed mother.

She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moralwilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamedforest, amid the gloom ...

From my first memories, my life has been defined by asearch for community. I was born in India but came to America atthe age of four to join my mother and father, arriving with myolder brother, Mustafa. Our parents had settled in New Jersey sothat my father, Zafar, could pursue his academic career. I lovedthe one-story red house that we called home ...

Because I Said So
33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race, and Themselves. Copyright © by Kate Moses. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write about Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race, and Themselves
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