About this episode

This episode discusses the tradwife novel 'Yesteryear' and explores the cultural implications and allure of tradwife narratives.

It was only a matter of time before the tradwife novels arrived. Not only have we been fascinated by these women – and their addictive yet alarming blend of aestheticized nostalgia porn, motherhood and domestic arts tips, and veiled (or not-so-veiled) reactionary politics – for at least half a decade, they are public figures optimized for projection, psychological speculation, and sheer fan fiction. After all, how well do we really know these women? Beneath their carefully constructed images, the precisely curated videos and photos of maternal and wifely bliss they show us, what are they truly thinking? What drives them? And what darker or less wholesome parts of themselves are they cropping out of the frame? These are not the self-narrativizing, confessional mommy bloggers of 20 years ago: they're the opening scene in a horror movie or a thriller, and we're just waiting for the grisly reveal. This week, we're discussing the book du jour, Caro Claire Burke's buzzy tradwife novel "Yesteryear." This isn't the first tradwife novel – for example, our friend Jo Piazza published an extremely fun murder mystery set in this world last year, "Everyone Is Lying to You" – but it is at the…

People in this episode

Host: Emma Gray

Topics covered

• tradwife novels
• cultural commentary
• literary analysis
• nostalgia
• motherhood
• domestic arts

Keywords

• tradwife
• novel
• Yesteryear
• Caro Claire Burke
• motherhood
• nostalgia
• cultural commentary

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Yesteryear, Everyone Is Lying to You

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