Mothering, Community, and Friendship





Price: $39.95

Page Count: 208

Publication Date: May 2022

ISBN: 978-1-77258-374-8

Mothers, Community, and Friendship is an anthology that explores the complexities of mothering/motherhood, communities, and friendship from across interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives. The chapters in this text not only examine how communities and friendship shape and influence the various spectrums of motherhood, but also analyze how communities and friendship are necessary for mothers. Through personal, reflective, critical essays, and ethnographies, this collection situates the ways mothers are connected to communities and how these relationships forms, such as in mothering groups and maternal friendships. By calling attention to these central and current topics, Mothers, Community, and Friendship represents how communities and friendship become means of empowerment for mothers.

Motherhood is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks faced by human beings – without formal training, without explicit guidelines, without a map. As explored in this collection, motherhood is made viable, sustainable, and joyous when mothers find solace, support, and solidarity through friendship and community, near and far, formal and informal. In fact, it is friendship and community that makes us stronger, less alone, and open to the universalities of motherhood while being fully cognizant of the disparities and differences. My greatest wish is that this message reaches all mothers, everywhere. We need each other. Together, we are stronger.

- Michelann Parr is professor in the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University and co-editor of Writing Mothers: Narrative Acts of Care, Redemption, and Transformation.

This book is a welcome, and absolutely, enjoyable Read! Through prose and poetry, the book tells stories of mothers, mothering, motherhood and community and transports the reader through, between and among the realms of the arduous journeys of mothering.
The book situates mothering work within socio-politically fraught contexts and takes the reader through the beautiful, challenging, traumatic, inspiring and transcendental experiences of mothers and mothering. Together, this eclectic collection of stories and voices open-up spaces of being, questioning and solidarity in ways that allow the reader to appreciate the world of mothers from across different planes and realms. As an ‘academic mama’, I enjoyed the intimacy of the stories shared; and especially the reminder of timeless traditions carried out sometimes without the support of the proverbial village in our globally interconnected -if also profoundly lonely world-. The book will appeal to varied audiences who will come to it, engage and leave it, from (and at) different entry points.

- Dr. Sylvia Bawa, Associate Professor of Sociology at York University

Editors Dannabang Kuwabong, Dorsía Smith Silva, and Essah Diaz present an international collection of essays from the United States, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Hungary, and Japan that heighten awareness of the universal need for mothers to have a network of friends and belong to a supportive community.

Mothering, Community, and Friendship addresses how “some mothers find strength in their communities and friendships, where others discuss their struggles with loneliness and emotional pain due to their lack of community and friendship.” Through poetry and prose, stories of the complexities of mothering and motherhood, told from a wide range of perspectives, are woven throughout the book—which itself could help foster a community for those who have not yet found their own. In search of community, mothers often look to others living in similar circumstances and similar backgrounds. This was the case for Mary King, Skye ChernichkyKarcher, and Jessica Pauly, whose essay, “Hiccups and Highlights of Academic Motherhood,” discusses how their friendship developed through different stages of their academic careers. During a virtual coffee date, common themes arose when each of them shared their individual stories, demonstrating that online friendships can be as strong as in-person ones. Other academics might resonate with their experiences, and with the assertion that “Mothers in academia need to develop a network of academic support to help manage the (sometimes conflicting) identities of mother and scholar.” Cultural backgrounds are an important factor that contribute to stronger connections, as pointed out in Catherine Ma’s essay, “Chinese Mothers Creating a Community of Maternal Support.” She shares that “in our tight-knit community of Chinese moms, we can vent about culturally relevant issues that only other Chinese moms can understand.” Ma concludes, “… to know that someone who has walked in your shoes can make the tribulations of motherhood more bearable and even fun at times. That is what true maternal friendships are all about.” Ma’s statement could apply to all mothers needing and valuing friendship and community on the basis of shared experience or cultural background. Mothering is hard. Having a community and a network of friends makes it easier.

- Christine Peets

• Motherhood and Communities

Introduction: Fluid Communities, Illusive Friendships, Phenomenal Mothering
by Dannabang Kuwabong, Essah Diaz and Dorsia Smith-Silva
• Hiccups and Highlights of Academic Motherhood: Three Accounts of Cultivating Community, and Friendship as an Academic and a Mom
by Mary King, Skye Chernichky-Karcher and Jessica Pauly

• Finding Community as a Mother
by Nicole L. Willey

• Mothers, Mentors, and Communities in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
and Sapphire’s Push
by Zsuzsanna Lénárt Muszka

• The Ripple Effect of Mothering in a Global Community: From Bloomington to Bogotá
by Silvia Rivera-Largacha and Angela N. Castañeda

• Film as Invitational Rhetoric: Transcending Motherhood Narratives through Community in 20th Century Women
by Rachel D. Davidson and Catherine A. Dobris

• Mma Habiba: from childless mother to community mother
by Dannabang Kuwabong

• Maria: A Mother’s Rage against her Community
by Dannabang Kuwabong

II. Motherhood and Friendship

• Fifty-five miles
by Heather Robinson

• Supportive & Destructive Female Relationships in Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter
by Sherean M. Shehada Hader

• Can We All Stand Together and Agree on This?: Space, Place, and Mothering in Lauren Mills’ Minna’s Patchwork Coat
by Hannah Swamidoss

• Chinese Mothers Creating a Community of Maternal Support
by Catherine Ma

• Beyond DNA
by Janice Tuck Lively and Mary Barbara Walsh
• Community of [C]omothers: How Friendships with Expatriate Mothers Create Intercultural Understanding
by Meredith Stephens

Dannabang Kuwabong, PhD is a professor of postcolonial Caribbean literature in English at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. He has published widely on different fields in academic journals, contributed numerous essays in books and journals. His books include Rhetoric of Resistance, Labor of Love: The Ecopoetics of Nationhood in the Poetry and Prose of Lasana M. Sekou, Voices from Kibuli Country, Caribbean Blues & Love’s Genealogy. He has co-authored books including Myth Performance in African Diaspora Drama: Ritual, Theatre, and Dance, Mothers and Daughters, etc. His critical essays on Caribbean and Caribbean-Canadian literature on mothering, have been published in numerous academic journals and books: Confluences I & II & III: Essays in the New Canadian Literature, Creative Contradictions, Positive Interferences, Caribbean Studies, Sargasso, Interviewing the Caribbean, The Mouth, Eleven Eleven, The Caribbean Writer, The Mouth, Interviewing the Caribbean, etc.

Dorsía Smith Silva, PhD is a professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Her poetry has been published in several journals, including Portland Review, Storyscape, Pidgeonholes, Mom Egg Review, and Moko Magazine. Her articles have been widely published as well, including in the Journal of Caribbean Literature. She is also the editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering and the co-editor of six books.

Essah Díaz is a doctoral student in Caribbean literature in English at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus. Her poems have appeared in several poetry journals, including Moko Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Tonguas, Odradek, and The Odyssey Online, Creative Contradictions, etc. She has co-edited the collected essays from the March 2020 Caribbean Without Borders Conference held at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Presently she is working on her dissertation with a focus on the poetics of healing in Caribbean women’s poetry.