Coming into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism





Price: $44.95

Page Count: 368

Publication Date: July 2023

ISBN: 978-1-77258-449-3

This collection explores how becoming and being a mother can be shaped by, and interconnected with, how mothers realize feminism and/or become feminists. Experiences of motherhood can involve unique discriminations and oppressions, as well as new challenges and possibilities. What may have been overlooked, tolerated, or perhaps even gone unnoticed before becoming a mother, can become overtly apparent or even unavoidable afterwards. Becoming a mother may also lead to a questioning of current feminist priorities and practices, and a recognition of the need for, or even demand for, a mother-centred mode of feminism. This anthology, separated into three sections – ‘Losing and Finding,’ ‘Challenging and Critiquing,’ and, ‘Connecting and Conversing’ – provides intersectionally sensitive and broad-ranging interdisciplinary insights into mothers’ perceptions of, connection to, and realizations of, feminism. International contributors examine this complex topic through a wide variety of texts including personal and scholarly essays, creative non-fiction, letters and Q and A style discussion, poetry, art, and photography.

Coming Into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism is a Compelling text that adds multidisciplinary thought to several areas, especially Mothering-Motherhood Studies. The book is distinguished not only by its scholarship, but also by its diverse chapters and impressive depth. Most importantly, it forges new pathways and gives readers a greater understanding of feminism. Readers should be prepared to add this book to their list and return to the text again and again.

-Dorsía Smith Silva, Ph.D., Full Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, Editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering and Co-Editor of Mothering, Community, and Friendship and Mothers, Mothering, and Globalization;

What it means to be a mother today is clearly being redefined by new generations of women, however, while new mothers are trying to ‘do it all’ there is a significant cost to their health and wellbeing. The social structuring of care, for infants and children in this case, has been privatized and gendered within families and has come under increasing scrutiny. This is work that is most often spoken of today as ‘unpaid care’ or code for motherhood, the structuring of care that is a product of our patriarchal heritage. Matricentric feminism and/or feminist mothers stand in opposition to these institutionalized practices and stories of these ‘outlaws’ are contained within; stories of pioneers of the future.

-Joan Garvan, PhD (Australian National University)

This book is undoubtedly another exciting and provocatively inclusive new addition to the discourse on feminist mothering. It painstakingly showcases and teases the reader with an eclectic, promiscuous, and intertextual array of exuberant, splendid, and intellectually, culturally, politically, socially invigorating essays, poetry, diary entries, paintings to stimulate and expand his/her notions of feminist mothering praxes. The critical interplays of bio- medical, semi-biographical, autoethnographic narratives and reflections on mother-daughter relationships, daughter-father-mother relationships, other maternal and matrilineal ambivalences are disturbingly revelatory and instructive of the multiple challenges women continue to battle. The book reveals some of the ways motherwork can be empowering and rewarding to mothers through their children’s positive participation as sociopolitical beings in a fractured world. A must have! A must read! Generally challenging! Ultimately exciting! Absolutely rewarding!

-Dannabang Kuwabong, Professor, University of Puerto Rico, co-editor, Mothers and Daughters; Mothering, Community and Friendship.

Introduction
Andrea O’Reilly, Fiona Joy Green, and Victoria Bailey

Section One
Losing and Finding

1.
Journeying through Feminist Motherhood: Reflections on Identity and Practice
Heather E. Dillaway

2.
Sunrise
Lianne Milton

3.
Single Teen Motherhood and the ‘Good’ Mother: Feminist Responses
Natasha Steer

4.
Discovering Feminist Motherhood Through Art Practice
Jen McGowan

5.
Holding and Being Held
Eve Darwood

6.
Colostrum
Victoria Bailey

7.
We Are Mothers
Rachel O’Donnell

Section Two
Challenging and Critiquing

8.
Coming into Motherhood: An Anishinaabeg Feminist View
on Birth and Motherhood in Hospital Spaces
Renée E. Mazinegiizhigoo-kwe Bédard

9.
Meandering Through the Intersections:
Feminist Mothering as a Transnational Migrant Academic Mom
Lili Shi

10.
Coming Home to Myself: On Single Black Motherhood
Kahaema Byer

11.
Reflections from a Settler and an Immigrant Mother of Colour:
How Motherhood Helped Me Develop My Feminist Politics Over the Last Decade
Shruti Raji-Kalyanaraman

12.
I’m Never Sleeping with You Again: Reflections on
Mothering, Community Building, and Unstable Allyship
Zaje A. T. Harrell

13.
The “Wildness of Motherhood”: Transforming Maternal Rage, Transgressing Patriarchal Motherhood to Realize Maternal Empowerment: A Reading of Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch
Andrea O’Reilly

Section Three
Connecting and Conversing

14.
Becoming a (Better) Feminist: Autoethnographic Lessons
I Learned about Feminism by Becoming a Mother
Molly Wiant Cummins

15.
Recognising Their Feminist Selves Through the Journey
of Mothering: Reflections of Urban Indian Mothers
Ketoki Mazumdar, Sneha Parekh Gupta, and Isha Sen

16.
A Conversation: A Mother and Daughter Discuss Feminism
Tara Carpenter Estrada and Emily Rae Robertson

17.
Motherhood, Art, and a Revolution
Jillayna Adamson
18.
Between Mothers: Dialogically Exploring Mother-Scholar Relationship
Rachel E. Stough and Elizabeth A. Bennett

19.
The COVID-19 Pandemic as a Catalyst for Feminist Thought
Lisa H. Rosen and Linda J. Rubin

20.
Feminist Representations of Maternity in
Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and Sarah Daniels’ Neaptide
Tuğrul Can Sümen

Notes on Contributors

Andrea O’Reilly, PhD, is full professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University, founder/editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative and publisher of Demeter Press. She is co editor/editor of thirty plus books including Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond (2020), Mothers, Mothering, and COVID-19: Dispatches from a Pandemic (2021), Maternal Theory, The 2nd Edition (2021), Monstrous Mothers; Troubling Tropes (2021, Maternal Regret: Resistances, Renunciations, and Reflections (2022), Normative Motherhood: Representations, Regulations, and Reclamations (2023) and Coming into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism (2023). She is editor of the Encyclopedia on Motherhood (2010) and co editor of the Routledge Companion to Motherhood (2019). She is author of Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart (2004); Rocking the Cradle: Thoughts on Motherhood, Feminism, and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering (2006); and Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice, The 2nd Edition (2021). She is twice the recipient of York University’s “Professor of the Year Award” for teaching excellence and is the 2019 recipient of the Status of Women and Equity Award of Distinction from OCUFA (Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations). She has received more than 1.5 million dollars in grant funding for her research projects including two current ones: “Older Young Mothers in Canada” and “Mothers and Returning to ‘Normal’: The Impact of the Pandemic on Mothering and Families.”