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Imagining Motherhood in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Literature
undertakes a comparative transnational reading to develop more
expansive literary models of good mothering. Abigail L. Palko
argues that Irish and Caribbean literary representations of
non-normative mothering practices do not reflect transgressive or
dangerous mothering but are rather cultural negotiations of the
definition of a good mother. This original book demonstrates the
sustained commitment to countering the dominant ideologies of
maternal self-sacrifice foundational to both Irish and Caribbean
nationalist rhetoric, offering instead the possibility of
integrating maternal agency into an effective model of female
citizenship.
Imagining Motherhood in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Literature
undertakes a comparative transnational reading to develop more
expansive literary models of good mothering. Abigail L. Palko
argues that Irish and Caribbean literary representations of
non-normative mothering practices do not reflect transgressive or
dangerous mothering but are rather cultural negotiations of the
definition of a good mother. This original book demonstrates the
sustained commitment to countering the dominant ideologies of
maternal self-sacrifice foundational to both Irish and Caribbean
nationalist rhetoric, offering instead the possibility of
integrating maternal agency into an effective model of female
citizenship.
Motherhood is one of those roles that assumes an almost-outsized
cultural importance in the significance we force it to bear. It
becomes both the source of and the repository for all kinds of
cultural fears. Its ubiquity perhaps makes it this perfect foil.
After all, while not everyone will become a mother, everyone has a
mother. When we force motherhood to bear the terrors of what it
means to be human, we inflict trauma upon those who mother. A long
tradition of bad mothers thus shapes contemporary mothering
practices (and the way we view them), including the murderous Medea
of Greek mythology, the power-hungry Queen Gertrude of Hamlet, and
the emasculating mother of Freud's theories. Certainly, there are
mother who cause harm, inflict abuse, act monstrously. Mothers are
human. But mothers are also a favourite and easy scapegoat. The
contributors to this collection explore a multitude of
interdisciplinary representations of mothers that, through their
very depictions of bad mothering, challenge the tropes of monstrous
mothering that we lean on, revealing in the process why we turn to
them. Chapters in Monstrous Mothers: Troubling Tropes explore
literary, cinematic, and real-life monstrous mothers, seeking to
uncover social sources and results of these monstrosities.
Mothers, Mothering, and Globalization is an anthology that cogently
and powerfully examines the diverse and complex experiences of
motherhood and mothering from a broad interdisciplinary
perspective. The lucid analysis of how globalization influences the
lives of mothers, especially in regard to cultural, political,
historical, social, and economic factors, provides a compelling
examination of the myriad of relationships between mothering and
globalization. The collection also surveys multiple approaches to
mothers, mothering, and globalization and contributes to a nascent
dialogue through its interrogation of the impact of globalization
on mothers and mothering practices through the lenses of feminist
ideologies; literary criticism; and cultural, social, and economic
analyses.
For myriad reasons, breastfeeding is a fraught issue among mothers
in the U.S. and other industrialized nations, and breastfeeding
advocacy in particular remains a source of contention for feminist
scholars and activists. Breastfeeding raises many important
concerns surrounding gendered embodiment, reproductive rights and
autonomy, essentializing discourses and the struggle against
biology as destiny, and public policies that have the potential to
support or undermine women, and mothers in particular, in the
workplace. The essays in this collection engage with the varied and
complicated ways in which cultural attitudes about mothering and
female sexuality inform the way people understand, embrace, reject,
and talk about breastfeeding, as well as with the promises and
limitations of feminist breastfeeding advocacy. They attend to
diffuse discourses about and cultural representations of infant
feeding, all the while utilizing feminist methodologies to
interrogate essentializing ideologies that suggest that women's
bodies are the "natural" choice for infant feeding. These
interdisciplinary analyses, which include history, law, art
history, literary studies, sociology, critical race studies, media
studies, communication studies, and history, are meant to represent
a broader conversation about how society understands infant feeding
and maternal autonomy.
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