The Passion of the Hausfrau cover image is courtesy of barnesandnoble.com.

Writer, cartoonist, and publisher Nicole Chaison is known for her self-published magazine, Hausfrau Muthah-zine, which she started publishing in 2003 after the birth of her second child.  These stories about motherhood, self-discovery, self-redemption, and the creative life were presented as text pieces, but each page of text was embedded with comics.

Essentially, Chaison designs each page so that one side contains text and the other side has an accompanying comics-type illustration or comics strip that provides insight or offers instructive asides to the text; sometimes the illustrations are simply meant as amusement.  Because of this design, Chaison’s work resembles that of the illuminated manuscripts of medieval Europe.  The structure of Chaison’s Hausfrau writing is based on a hero’s journey, particularly as described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Chaison’s work in Hausfrau Muthah-zine is collected in the new hardcover book, The Passion of the Hausfrau: Motherhood, Illuminated, from Villard Books.  This is a book I wasn’t happy to get as a review copy.  I figured that Villard’s PR person would know better than to send me something like this.  Why would a guy want to read The Passion of the Hausfrau?  [“hausfrau” is German for “housewife”]  Still, I gave it a chance, and I learned that if you really can’t judge a book by its cover, you probably can by its introduction, especially when the introduction is as fun to read as the one here.

I’d planned on skimming through The Passion of the Hausfrau, before passing it on to one of my sisters, two of whom are mothers.  I decided to focus on the book’s introduction, which is entitled to “Introduction: How it Came to Be that I Wrote This Book.”  It’s Chaison’s manifesto, her call to arms, her declaration that she would indeed finish a book, and it has Bill Romanowski in it.

Nicknamed “Romo,” William Thomas Romanowski is a former professional football player.  A two-time Pro Bowl and All-Pro selection, Romo won four Super Bowls (two each with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos, and he is the only linebacker to start in five Super Bowls.  Having gone to high school with Romo, Chaison measured her lack of professional success against Romo’s success, which included appearances in several films, including the 2005 remake of The Longest Yard.  The release of Romo’s autobiography: Romo: My Life on the Edge: Living Dreams and Slaying Dragons, which was a New York Times bestselling book, furthered infuriated the Chaison, then a full-bore frustrated writer.

Comparing her struggles to Romo’s successes somehow connects Chaison’s writing to her readers, because they can sympathize with her – if not outright identify with her, which I can to a certain extent.  The introduction… illuminates Chaison’s ability to engage her readers.  This may be especially true when it comes to women who lead lives similar to Chaison’s, either belonging to her socio-economic class or who have had similar life experiences.

No, this isn’t necessarily a book for me, but I still find it interesting because some of the writing does touch me.  Women may latch on to The Passion of the Hausfrau: Motherhood, Illuminated because, while it is delightfully different in terms of format, the story told might be intimately familiar to them.