Price: $55.95
Page Count: 536
Publication Date: May 2024
ISBN: 978-1-77258-527-8
An extraordinary treasure trove of riches. Andrea O'Reilly has done more than perhaps anyone in the 21st century to express, improve and empower the lives of mothers and care-givers. Her contribution to bringing issues of the maternal out of the shadows is unrivalled. This collection of her writing is essential reading for all people. A gift of a collection, and one that I shall return to again and again throughout my life. She offers us a road-map and new ways of thinking for transforming the institution of motherhood and revolutionising how we think about care, mothering and womanhood. A profoundly important, deeply generative and provoking assemblage of work, analysis and imagination by one of the greatest thinkers and minds of our modern age.
-Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence
O'Reilly has forged a path ahead for other scholars and writers interested in mothering and motherhood with her thought-provoking research and writing. I have benefitted from her work in my own writing and reflections on motherhood. This is a timely collection marking the life's work of a distinguished scholar that will be a huge resource for decades to follow.
-Pragya Agarwal, author of (M)otherhood: On the choices of being a woman
This monumental collection by Andrea O’Reilly is testimony to her world-changing, revolutionary work in the very field she herself named: motherhood studies. The collection ensures an enduring legacy of maternal scholarship, immortalizing not just O’Reilly’s key theories, but also the works of foundational maternal scholars and foremothers, for generations to come. Groundbreaking and essential reading.
Sophie Brock, Motherhood Studies, Sociologist, former president and current executive member of Maternal Scholars Australia
This collection features some of the most iconic pieces of Andeaa O’Reilly’s field-defining work. The collection includes previously published texts introducing groundbreaking concepts such as matricentric feminism, matrifocal narrative, and patriarchal as opposed to empowered and feminist mothering. It also contains essays on maternal activism, maternal regret, mothers in academia, mothering through the Covid pandemic, young mothers, and racialised mothers as well as interviews that contextualise O’Reilly’s thinking and make the collection even more compelling. Theoretical and insightful, O’Reilly’s writing is also accessible. This is essential reading for both motherhood scholars as well as feminist mothers outside of academia.
- Eglė Kačkutė – Coordinator of the MotherNet Network, Associate Professor in French and Migration Studies, Vilnius University
In (M)other Words is the oracle of the theory and action behind the field of M/other and Motherhood studies. Andrea O’Reilly has pushed back with a deeply intimate and thoughtful account of the theories, perspectives, and timeline of this burgeoning study of feminism that encompasses the modern motherhood movement in academia and beyond.
- Martha Joy Rose, Founder of the Museum of Motherhood
O’Reilly asserts her authority as the mother of motherhood studies in this stellar collection of essential readings. A must own collection for any motherscholar.
- Katie B. Garner, Executive Director, IAMAS
In (M)other Words: Writings on Mothering and Motherhood 2009-2024, is a rich tapestry of narratives; a collection that examines the essence of motherhood through consideration of our deepest human experiences, gathering years of Andrea O'Reilly's insights into a single volume. The collection speaks to the intricate dance of power and vulnerability that defines mothering. O'Reilly weaves together tales that challenge the constraints of a patriarchal gaze, inviting us to look again and in new form at the act of mothering - as an act of defiance, love, and creation. In the spaces between her words lies an invitation to re-envision motherhood, to hold it up to the light and see within it a boundless potential for transformation, healing, and radical joy. This anthology is not merely a collection of essays but a call to witness, celebrate, and reimagine the contours of motherhood. O'Reilly offers us a lens through which to view motherhood not as it has been prescribed, but as it is lived: fiercely, tenderly, with a resilience that speaks to the heart of what it means to nurture, fight, and love in the face of a world that often tests, strains and looks away.
- J. Maki Motapanyane, Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Women's Studies Mount Saint Vincent University
Foreword, Fiona Joy Green
Introduction
1. Thinking Through Matricentric Feminism: Interview with Andrea O'Reilly in Riga, Latvia 26.01.2024., with Zita Kārkla
2. Interview: Dr. Andrea O’Reilly and the Motherhood Perspective, with Maria Elizabeth P. Souto Maior Mendes and Maria Collier de Mendonça
3. Matricentric Feminism: A Feminism for Mothers
4. Normative Motherhood: Regulations, Representations, and Reclamations, An Introduction
5. Coming into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism, An Introduction, with Victoria Bailey and Fiona Joy Green
6. The Twenty-First-Century Motherhood Movement
7. Empowered and Feminist Mothering
8. Throwing the Baby out with Bathwater: The Disavowal and Disappearance of Motherhood in 20th and 21st Century Academic Feminism
9. Towards a Literary Theory and Criticism of Matricritics: “Begin with the mother in her own right” to deliver “new meanings of motherhood and transform maternal thinking itself”
10. Maternal Regret
11. Pandemic Mothering, with Fiona Joy Green
12. “Certainly Not an Equal-Opportunity Pandemic”: COVID-19 and Its Impact on Mothers’ Carework, Health, and Employment
13. Feminist Perspectives on Young Mothers and Young Mothering: Reflections on Youth and Mothering, An Introduction, with Deborah Byrd and Joanne Minaker
14. In Search of the Goddess: Creating a Feminist Motherline for Mother-Daughter Connection and Empowerment, with Casey O’Reilly-Conlin
15. “Have Your Cake and Eat It Too”: Challenging and Changing Normative Gender Roles through Partnerships
16. Across the Divide: Contemporary Anglo-American Feminist Theory on the Mother- Daughter Relationship
17. In Black and White: African American and Anglo American Feminist Perspectives on Mothers and Sons
18. African American Mothering: ―Home is Where the Revolution Is‖
19. “It Saved My Life”: The National Association of Mothers’ Centers, Matricentric Pedagogy, and Maternal Empowerment
20. Academic Motherhood in a Post-Second Wave Context: Framing the Conversation, with Lynn O’Brien Hallstein
21. “I Should Have Married Another Man”; “I Couldn’t Do What I Do Without Him”: Intimate Heterosexual Partnerships and their Impact on Mothers’ Success in Academe
22. Literatures in Text and Tradition: Daughter-Centric, Matrilineal, and Matrifocal Perspectives, An Introduction, with Liz Podnieks
23. The Motherhood Memoir and the ―New Momism‖: Biting the Hand that Feeds You
24. Feminist Mothering as Maternal Practice: Maternal Authority and Social Acceptability of Children
25. A Conversation About Maternal Thinking, with Sara Ruddick
Dr. Andrea O’Reilly is internationally recognized as the founder of Motherhood Studies (2006) and its subfield Maternal Theory (2007), and creator of Matricentric Feminism, a feminism for and about mothers (2016) and Matricritics, a literary theory and practice for a reading of mother-focused texts (2024). She 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 on many motherhood topics including: Feminist Mothering, Young Mothers, Monstrous Mothers, Maternal Regret, Normative Motherhood, Mothers and Sons, Mothers and Daughters, Maternal Texts, Academic Motherhood, Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism and Mothering and Covid-19. 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). Forthcoming titles include: The Mother Wave: Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism , The Missing Mother, and Revolutionizing Motherlines. She is currently completing her monograph Matricritics as Literary Theory and Criticism: Reading the Maternal in Post-2010 Women’s Narratives. Matricritics as Literary Theory and Criticism: Reading the Maternal in Post-2010 Women’s Narratives.
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: “Millennial Moms” and “Mothers and Returning to ‘Normal’: The Impact of the Pandemic on Mothering and Families.”
