Price: $44.95
Page Count: 368
Publication Date: July 2023
ISBN: 978-1-77258-449-3
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.
Review by Sarah Walker Caron
I never considered myself a feminist. Even as I parented outside the confines of what mother is “supposed” to look like, I didn’t apply feminism to what I was doing. That all changed when I became a single mother in my 30s, starting over with my children in a new state and eventually obtaining a divorce.
That experience of rediscovery and redefining myself is what drew me to Coming Into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism, edited by Andrea O’Reilly, Fiona Joy Green, and Victoria Bailey. This academic book of essays on feminist mothering takes the very idea and turns it around in the light to see all angles through a series of essays by academic mothers on the subject.
The book is divided into three sections: “Losing and Finding;” “Challenging and Critiquing;” and
Connecting and Conversing.” Within each section are a series of essays (and occasional poems and art pieces) that explore the section theme and the overarching theme of feminism. Each author defines and places themselves within the construct of feminism, chipping away at the parts that don’t feel comfortable or fitting. They struggle against their life experiences, defining and redefining as they explore feminism within their mothering journey.
Heather E. Dillaway writes about this in her essay, “Journey through Feminist Motherhood: Reflections on Identity and Practice.” Dillaway writes: “Upon reflection, I find that I am attempting to reach two intertwined goals: maintaining my own personhood while mothering and raising children who understand and support gender equality” (31).
Some essays are academically dense, filled with citations and connections. Others are more creative like “Sunrise” by Lianne Milton, a pictorial of the many facets of her feminist motherhood. Milton writes, “In becoming a mother, I gave birth to a new kind of feminism— an embrace of my maternal power as an act of defiance. I voted to maintain the same agency as a mother-artist that I had before having a baby” (49).
With topics ranging from the re-identification of oneself as an artist after becoming a mother to single motherhood to teenage motherhood to immigrant motherhood to the racism experienced in the hospital setting by an indigenous mother, this is a series of thought-provoking essays that challenge norms and shed light on experiences beyond the reader’s own.
Lili Shi’s essay, “Meandering Through the Intersections,” explores her experience as a Chinese immigrant married to a white American who must confront her heritage and balance its expectations even as she aims to raise her children to embrace their heritage and eschew racism and misogyny. She concludes by writing, “My feminist mothering works best when it is invitational, dynamic, and not unidirectional. As a feminist mother, I am always on the journey of becoming.” (158)
At times while reading this, I cringed. Dillaway’s fixation on “paid work” seems to suggest that mothers who divide their time between mothering and other commitments that don’t draw a paycheck are somehow not doing the important work that those who work outside the home are. She writes: “I knew how important it was to protect mother time, but I refused to give up paid work time. I struggled to maintain the boundaries between my two types of time and failed to get the balance right on many days.” (37) As a young mother, I also divided my time between mothering and other work, sometimes unpaid. Was my work less significant because it didn’t result in a paycheck? Was that balance of self and mother not important? Does it matter that the work was intended to build toward paying work later (and that it all panned out and still produces a significant income)?
This is the kind of thought-provoking dialogue this volume evokes. As a work of academics, presented in mostly academic essays, this could be the perfect scholarly work to read alongside mainstream writing about motherhood in a university course. I can picture the conversations that would arise while reading these essays, one by one, and dissecting the ideas in them while seeking a better understanding — and perhaps a modern revision — of what feminism can be.
- Sarah Walker Caron is a Pushcart nominated essayist as well as a food writer and author. Her work has appeared in Farmer-ish, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, SheKnows and more. Her latest cookbook, Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts: Official Wizarding World Cookbook, is available where books are sold.
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.”
