Ship Moms by Jen Winsor

reviewed by Max Hill

In this review, I make two confessions, complete penance, and ask for absolution. ↓

My first confession is that Ship Moms is not the type of book I would choose to read of my own volition. I am in no way the target audience of a book that features a prominent interview with a Brazilian reality TV star and contains such salacious details as a mid-labour helicopter rescue on the high seas or a woman suffering such a vicious hangover that she expels her IUD. It’s the kind of book that I would typically dismiss as catnip for wine moms, the antithesis of the serious and the literary, or more simply, just fluff.

Here’s the thing about fluff, though. It’s popular for a reason. If your pillow had no fluff, you’d have a rough time sleeping at night.

My second confession is that my decision to read Ship Moms was motivated by more than just a byline in a literary mag. Its author, Jen Winsor, is a friend and former colleague, one of the first Newfoundlanders outside of my wife’s immediate family whom I’ve befriended since moving here earlier this year. Perhaps I clicked with her because of her own experiences as a fish out of water, which Winsor chronicles at the beginning of her book, where her new cruise ship deckmates lovingly dub her “Dildo” after her childhood hometown. This feeling is all-too-familiar to me as a certified come from away who spends half their time wondering if place names like “Blow Me Down” and “Tickle Cove” are all part of some elaborate mainlander hazing ritual.

Naturally, we also became friends because Winsor is friendly and approachable, traits that are certainly not uncommon among islanders, yet clearly evident in the testimony of the women who willingly shared their stories with her for Ship Moms. The insight and care with which she recounts these women’s experiences (weaved within her own narrative) is heartwarming and, in its own way, radical. Each of the book’s ship moms provide Winsor with meticulous detail and, in many cases, brutal honesty about the trials of motherhood and the sometimes-inconsistent presence of their seafaring baby daddies. The vast majority of them, unfortunately, are not a part of their children’s lives.

The book’s titular “ship moms” come from places like China, Australia, and South Africa; they work jobs as janitors and housekeepers, supporting their children (often as single mothers) while earning degrees or navigating mazelike immigration laws. They are not the type of people who typically get their turn in the spotlight; more often, they’re the ones mopping the stage afterwards.

Part of the reason books like Ship Moms are not my preferred choice is that they so often read as the literary equivalent of made-for-streaming reality TV, which is all too happy to paint a vulgar picture of its subjects, being as it is more interested in shock value than in humanity. What comes across when reading Winsor’s work, more than any of its shocking details or risqué revelations (and there are plenty), is her clear empathy for her subjects. She affords them dignity in a way I have seldom seen anywhere else, and it’s a dignity that sidesteps any condescension: the dramas of their lives are given genuine attention, weight, and consideration.

Maybe all of this seems silly to say about a book whose primary appeal for most will be as a cheeky and often ribald deep dive into the lives of those who work on cruise ships. Indeed, if all you are looking for is a fun, breezy read with plenty of piping hot tea, this book will be glad to deliver that for you. But reader, I got something more out of it — a celebration of motherhood that doesn’t glorify or obfuscate its challenges; a genuine reckoning with gender dynamics and family structures in a post-nuclear world; a celebration of true multiculturalism in all of its glorious messiness; and a remarkably honest and courageous reckoning with Windsor’s own challenges, be it with neurodiversity, substance abuse, or plain old low self-esteem.

I promised you penance, in the hopes of absolution. I have often dismissed books on no other grounds than their subject matter. I have judged many books by their covers. By doing so I have not only missed quality works of writing, but in the process distanced myself from the stories and lived experiences of people unlike myself. I have been guilty of the cardinal sin of literary snobbishness.

I chose to read and review Ship Moms because I know Winsor personally, and even then, I was ready to dislike it. I am not a stranger to that unfortunate experience of reading a friend’s writing and, let’s say, not loving it. I was ready to write a middling review that overpraised the book’s virtues and downplayed its faults. 

Instead, my experience was wholly unexpected and truly delightful, all the more so because I so rarely engage with art of this kind; if anything, Ship Moms has encouraged me to look beyond my echo chamber and to broaden my horizons as a reader. And really, is there any better praise than that?

–X

Max Hill (they/them) is an interdisciplinary writer and archivist originally from Vancouver, BC and now based in St. John’s, NL. When not selling their labour they like to cook, walk, and read.