Mother's Millennia

"'Mother Millennia' is a collection of essays, poems, and hypertexts regarding the subject of 'mother.' The stories are provided by many cultural backgrounds from around the world, thus covering the complete history of mother over millennium. The site was open to anyone who wanted to read or contribute to the human race's understanding of 'mother,' inviting viewers to offer their unique perspectives based on personal experience.

The main goal of the project was to study diversity. Guyer stated that her hope was to create 'a living example of how our differences can hold our individual and cultural identities while at the same time allowing spheres to overlap' (Mother Millennia.) In sum, even though remembering or hearing stories about mothers is a commonality shared between all humans, no experience will be exactly the same due to differences in culture, perspectives, memories, and circumstances.

Though the website contains many connections (or threads) between stories and other pages, it uses icons and clear link descriptions to prevent the user from getting lost. At a glance, it can be seen that the site is divided into nine main pages: an About page, Stories page, Authors page, Threads page, Biblio page (bibliography), Maps page (which was never completed), Related page (which contains links to sites related to Mother Millennia), Your Story page (a list of resources to help contributors get started), and a Help Page.

The main attraction of the website is the Stories section. The site houses a large collection of hypertexts, either internally or linking externally, but also contains essays and poetry. Users can either navigate these works by Author, Title, Story Genre, or by clicking through hyperlinks. The stories are well-organized within an alphabetical index that also provides the author's name, type of work, and language(s) it was communicated in. If users wish, they can visit another page that alphabetizes these works by author's last name. The works are also organized into various threads, which include Adoption, Biography, Birth, Emigre, Essay, Father, Fiction, Flora, Food, Grandmother, Graphics, Letters, Memoir, Oral History, Poetry, Video/Sound, and War." -- Kathleen Zoller, "The Progressive Dinner Party Introduction"