Price: $49.95
Page Count: 450
Publication Date: September 2024
ISBN: 978-1-77258-505-6
Utterly thrilling. A potentially world-changing, game-changing work. This is the book that will help us transform the institution of motherhood.
- Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence
The Mother Wave offers a welcome critical perspective on the liberal feminist orientation toward gender equality by showing how the focus on equality does not remedy patriarchal systems of oppression that continue to challenge women’s lives, nor does it account for the emancipatory potential in mothering experiences and the affirmation that diversely situated women continue to find in motherhood.
Foregrounding the lived experience of women and others who do the work of maternal care, the contributors make a strong case for matricentric feminism as a new framework: one that treats the maternal as an issue of both biological difference and a set of complex social identities. Informed by the African American feminist commitment to the epistemological importance of lived experience, on the one hand, and third-wave feminist commitment to intersectionality on the other, the collection claims and demonstrates through multidisciplinary analyses that maternity matters more than gender.
- Tatjana Takseva, Department of English Language and Literature / Women and Gender Studies Program, Saint Mary’s University
Toppling and recasting the idea of “waves” that, until now, correspond to stale time periods and stages of the feminist movement, The Mother Wave allows us to begin seeing matricentric feminism as a core feminist theory and burgeoning politic. Positioning mothers and motherwork at the center of feminism, and motherhood as perhaps the uniting experience among most women, O’Reilly and Green allow for a new “wave” of feminist scholarship and mother experience to take hold and crest – a matricentric wave. The editors introduce a vast array of scholarship and creative work within this volume that collectively helps us understand both consistent themes and new surges within this subfield of feminist thought and experience.
- Heather Dillaway, Illinois State University.
Introduction, Andrea O’Reilly and Fiona Green
Theorizing
1. This Love is Revolutionary: Mothering as Resistance to Oppressive Systems, Zaje A. T. Harrell
2. The Case for Radical Inclusion in Mothering Studies: Matricentric Feminism Can and Should Take on Genderism, Nicole L. Willey
3. The Mother Wave and the Italian Matricentric River Delta, Veronica Frigeni
4. Centring the voices of Caribbean Mothers: Making the case for a Matricentric Feminist Theorising, Daniele Bobb
5. Out of Praxis, Theory: Being and Becoming a Matricentric Feminist, Michelann Parr
6. Mother’s Speaking: Towards An Ethics of Maternal Monstrosity, Abigail L. Palko
7. Choosing Matricentric Feminism in an Era of Choice Feminism: A Way Forward, Katie B.
Garner
Enacting
8. The Theory and Praxis of Matricentric Feminism in the Lives of Motherhood Studies Certification Course Participants, Dr Sophie Brock
9. I Am Becoming My Mother: Conjuring Black Motherhood On Our Own Terms, Sheree Mack
10. Black Mothers' Responses to Systems of Oppression: Navigating Work, Family, and Self-Actualization, Nicole Dezrea Jenkins
11. Using Matricentric Feminist Research to Create Space for Mothers on Campus, Alexis Carrion and Andrea DeKeseredy
12. Without a Village: Motherhood, Child Care, and COVID-19- A Research Journey, Bailey Higgins
Representing
13. 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,”Andrea O’Reilly
14. Swimming against Plato: Rachel Cusk’s Outline, Else Werring
15. Matricentric Feminism and Non-Normative Migrant Mothering in Recent Contemporary Fiction from Spain and the US, Carolina Toscano
16. Matricentric Art: A Philosophy of Maternal Work Through the Act of Creativity, Anna M. Hennessey
17. Commoning the Maternal: Matricentric Feminism and Motherworks Festival, Jodie Hawkes and Pete Phillips
18. The Last American Housewife, Martha Joy Rose
19. Riding the Wave rather than Waving Off: The Academic Study of Religions and Matricentric Feminism, Florence Pasche Guignard & Pascale Engelmajer
Andrea O’Reilly
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 coeditor/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. Her collection Maternal Theory: Essential Reading (2021) has been used as a course text in university classes around the world and is regarded as the foundational text in Motherhood Studies. She is editor of the Encyclopedia on Motherhood (2010) and coeditor 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: “Millennial Moms” and “Mothers and Returning to ‘Normal’: The Impact of the Pandemic on Mothering and Families.”
Fiona Joy Green (she/her) is a cisgender, temporarily able-bodied, straight feminist mother who believes in the power of revolutionary feminist motherwork beyond the gender binary. She is a white settler and holds the position of Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg, located on ancestral lands, on Treaty One Territory, and on the homeland of the Métis peoples. Fiona is the author of Practicing Feminist Mothering (ARP) and co-editor of seven Demeter Press collections that address ever-changing feminist parenting practices and maternal pedagogies. Recent titles include Mothers, Mothering and COVID-19: Reflections from a Pandemic (2021), Parenting/ Internet/ Kids: Domesticating Technologies (2022), Coming into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism, (2023) and the forthcoming co-edited collection Revolutionizing Motherlines (2025).
