In (M)other Words: Writings on Mothering and Motherhood, 2009-2024

By 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 the concept of Matricentric Feminism, a feminism for and about mothers (2016) and Matricritics, a literary theory and practice for a reading of mother-focused texts (2021). With this collection O'Reilly continues the conversation on the meaning and nature of motherhood initiated by Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born close to fifty years ago. In In (M)other Words, O'Reilly shares 25 of her chapters and articles published between 2009-2024 to examine the oppressive and empowering dimensions of mothering and to explore motherhood as institution, experience, subjectivity, and empowerment. The collection considers the central themes and theories of motherhood studies including normative motherhood, feminist mothering, maternal regret, matricentric pedagogy, young mothers, academic motherhood, matricentric feminism, matricritics, motherhood and feminism, the motherhood memoir, the twenty-first-century motherhood movement, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, pandemic mothering, and the motherline.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Demeter Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781772585285

Book preview

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: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

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 collection features some of the most iconic pieces of Andrea 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

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 trans-formation, 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

In (M)other Words

Writings on Mothering and Motherhood 2009–2024

Andrea O’Reilly

In (M)other Words

Writings on Mothering and Motherhood 2009–2024

Andrea O’Reilly

Copyright © 2024 Demeter Press

Individual copyright to their work is retained by the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: In (m)other words: writings on mothering and motherhood, 2009-2024 / by Andrea O’Reilly.

Other titles: In other words

Names: O’Reilly, Andrea, 1961- author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana 20240349695 | ISBN 9781772585278 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Motherhood. | LCSH: Motherhood—Social aspects. | LCSH: Mothers.

Classification: LCC HQ759 .O74 2024 | DDC 306.874/3—dc23

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada

Acknowledgements

I would like to share part of the acknowledgement I wrote for my first monograph A Politics of the Heart: Toni Morrison and Motherhood, 2004. In Morrison’s novel The Song of Solomon, the narrator, commenting upon the importance of othermothering says this about Hagar Dead: She needed what most colored girls needed: a chorus of mamas, grandmamas, aunts, cousins, sisters, neighbors, Sunday school teachers, best girl friends, and what all to give her the strength life demanded of her—and the humor with which to live it (311). I believe scholars likewise need a "chorus of mamas’ to think and write well. I have been blessed with a symphony in my life. Over the last fifteen years as I wrote these chapters, and in the last year as I compiled them into this collection, my chorus of mamas bestowed upon me the strength a writing life demands and the humour with which to live it.

I am deeply indebted to the sheros of Demeter Press—Michelle Pirovich, Jena Woodhouse, Jesse O’Reilly-Conlin, and Casey O’Reilly-Conlin—who copy-edited, typeset, and proofed this collection with care and skill.

Thank you to the writers and readers of the Demeter Press family. My thinking on mothering was enhanced and sustained by this resplendent community of scholars.

I am deeply grateful to Fiona Joy Green for her splendid Foreword and for a quarter century of friendship.

Finally, and as always, thank you to my children, Jesse, Clementine, and Casey, and to my life partner Terry for being there with and for me as I sought to live and write a new and empowering maternal story, one written in (m)other words.

Foreword

Fiona Joy Green

A fabulous treat awaits you within this magnificent collection of writings by Andrea O’Reilly. Let me tell you a bit about the legacy of the matriarch of motherhood studies before you delve further into the wisdom of her words in the following pages.

I first met Andrea in September 1997 and instantly knew that I was in the presence of a unique, passionate, and magnificent woman. Upon seeing the need to bring those interested in mothering and motherhood together due to her own experiences, initially as a young mother and graduate student and then as a contract faculty member and mother of three children between the ages of 8 and 13 years, Andrea coordinated the first ever international conference on mothering and motherhood at York University, Toronto, Canada. At the time, I was a relatively new mother and a PhD candidate exploring feminist mothering. I was excited to be at a conference that centred mothering and feminism. I, along with 150 women from Canada, Europe, and the USA, participated in a gathering that was unlike anything any of us had previously experienced. Our interest and passion for mothering and motherhood was seen, heard, and validated. We no longer had to explain the importance or relevance of mothers, mothering, or motherhood. We were free to have critical and meaningful discussions, speak truth to power based upon our experiential knowledge, and begin to theorize and engage in feminist and maternal praxis. Andrea had successfully created a small trusting community over that magical and momentous weekend!

What Andrea has developed since then is profoundly astonishing. She immediately recognized the urgent need for a feminist scholarly and activist organization that both supported and expanded the networking and momentum of that initial conference. Within a year, she founded The Association for Research on Mothering (ARM), later to become The Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI). ARM/MIRCI was the first research association on motherhood and grew to have more than 400 paid members from more than two dozen countries. Andrea’s commitment to creating and offering opportunities for others to come together means that she has personally applied for grants to support 55 international conferences across the globe in countries such as Barbados, Canada, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Puerto Rico, and the United States. Two sister associations, Maternal Scholars Australia and the International Mothers Network, have formed as a result of these international conferences. In 2020, MIRCI transitioned to a different organization based in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The International Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship (IAMAS) is a scholar-activist, interdisciplinary, non-profit organization that aims to promote empowered mothering via research on and advocacy for and with mothers. IAMAS continues the work of supporting, nurturing, and growing the community that Andrea started more than a quarter of a century ago.

Also aware that research and scholarship on mothers, mothering, and motherhood are often marginalized—if not neglected—in post-secondary curricula, course materials, texts, and scholarly publications, Andrea decided to create a peer-reviewed journal in 1999. As the founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering (JARM), now known as the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative (JMI), Andrea ensures that the most current, high quality scholarship on mothering-motherhood is considered within an international context and from a multitude of diverse perspectives including ability, age, class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, and sexuality. Having had the privilege of working alongside Andrea on the JMI Advisory Board since its inception, I can attest to its rigour and far reach. Over the past 25 years, JARM/JMI has published 50 issues with more than 800 articles authored by scholars, researchers, mothers, activists, and artists from around the world. Committed to ensuring that JMI is easily accessible and available through an on-line open access format, Andrea has personally written grant applications to secure a SSHRC Aid to Scholarly Publication Grant for the past twenty years.

With the proliferation and success of MIRCI’s international scholarly conferences and the profusion of articles on mothering and motherhood being published in JMI, Andrea coined the term motherhood studies to demarcate scholarship on motherhood as a legitimate and autonomous academic dis-cipline. In 2006, Andrea founded Demeter Press to help launch, support, and develop this emerging scholarly field of motherhood studies. Demeter Press is the first and only independent feminist press committed to publishing peer-reviewed scholarly work, fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction on mother-ing, reproduction, sexuality, and family. The following year, she proved that motherhood studies is grounded in the canon of maternal theory and is explicitly interdisciplinary by publishing an immense collection of the 50 must read theorists in the field in the first edition of Maternal Theory: Essential Readings. With her immense skill and expertise as the publisher of Demeter Press, Andrea has significantly contributed to the establishment and growth of the field of motherhood studies. She has ensured that feminist and maternal research and scholarship are published, available, and taught. Her persistent determination and relentless work of applying for and successfully receiving an annual Heritage Book Fund Grant means that by the end of 2024 Demeter Press will have published more than 200 books!

Even with the vast development of motherhood studies through MIRCI, JMI, and Demeter Press, Andrea discovered through conversations with many maternal scholars and activists that motherhood scholars were not always welcome at feminist and other scholarly conferences. In 2016, with support from a significant research grant, Andrea engaged in a quantitative study to determine that motherhood is indeed marginalized in feminist and women’s studies curricula, course texts, conferences, and publications. With this knowledge, she coined the term matricentric feminism, which she defines, explores, and develops in both editions of Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice (2017 and 2021). Matricentric feminism is a feminism that starts with the conviction that mothers and mothering matters, and that mothering is central to the lives of those who identify as mothers. Based on the belief that mothering is a verb, matricentric feminism understands that becoming and being a mother is not limited to biological mothers or cisgender women, but rather to anyone who does the work of mothering as a central part of their life. Any understanding of the lives of mothers is incomplete without a consideration of how becoming and being a mother shapes one’s sense of self and how to live in the world. Maternal scholars have keenly taken up the theory and praxis of matricentric feminism. JMI published a double volume on the topic, conference sessions and themes commonly center matricentric feminism, and publications, such as the forthcoming Demeter Press collection, The Mother Wave: Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism, co-edited by Andrea and me, continue to explore and expand the praxis of matricentric feminism.

Andrea’s work is truly international. Over the past twenty years, she has given more than130 conference presentations—including 31 keynote addresses —across the globe in multiple countries, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Northern Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Qatar, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, The Netherlands, Thailand, Wales, and the USA. Her publication record is extraordinary, to say the least. A prolific thinker and writer, Andrea has published three sole authored books, 15 edited com-pilations, 28 co-edited collections, 100 book chapters, and 24 refereed articles. An expert in the field of motherhood studies, her insight and knowledge are in high demand. She has reviewed more than 20 manuscripts and journal articles and written multiple book endorsements. What is even more astounding is that Andrea has done all of this while concurrently undertaking the necessary teaching, administrative, and other scholarly responsibilities essential to becoming an esteemed Professor with the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies in the Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies at York University, Toronto, Canada. Andrea has taught 16 courses, supervised or par-ticipated in over 50 graduate student committees, and been an external examiner of more than 30 doctorate dissertations. Known for her excellent teaching and mentorship, Andrea has twice been the recipient of the Professor of the Year Award at York University and has received the Status of Women and Equity Award of Distinction from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations.

Maria Collier de Mendonça, a tenured professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil shares one of many examples of the global impact of Andrea’s commitment to maternal scholars, to motherhood studies, and to its community. In 2013, Maria and Andrea spent a year together when Andrea supervised Maria as a visiting graduate student at York University, Toronto, Canada. When Maria returned to Brazil, she was a transformed thinker and scholar with a suitcase of more than 30 books that were mostly edited or recommended by Andrea. Seeing the wealth of and need for her newfound knowledge and resources, Maria’s PhD advisor, Oscar Cesarotto, told Maria that she must translate the English texts to Portuguese and disseminate the vital knowledge to others. Maria took on this colossal challenge and responsibility.

Inspired by Andrea’s ongoing role modeling, Maria created a successful network of Brazilian students, researchers, and professors who are mothers and who participate in university collectives, research groups on motherhood studies, and long-term projects focused on making visible the needs of academic mothers. These Brazilian academic mothers have generated a working group with participants from the five regions of Brazil to expand the debate about the development of policies for the inclusion, permanence, and progress of mothers in Brazilian universities and to develop a national policy for the permanence of mothers in universities with the Ministry of Education in Brasilia. Together with professors Carolina Dantas de Figueiredo, Milena Freire de Oliveira-Cruz, Patrícia Fanaya, and Elizabeth Souto Maior, Maria has produced more than 30 podcasts and radio programs, curated an exhibition on campus, given presentations at national and international conferences, hosted online and face-to-face conversation circles, and coordinated workshops on matricentric feminism. One of Maria’s recent publications includes an article featuring an interview with Andrea discussing her perspectives about motherhood, maternity, and mothering and the outstanding issues of feminism in the special issue of the Artemis Feminist Journal, entitled Maternidades e Maternagens: representações e contestações (Motherhoods and Mothering: representations and contestations).

May you be enriched by engaging with this fine selection of some of Andrea’s most significant works. This exquisite assortment of readings touches upon several insights, theories, and perspectives that the architect of motherhood studies and matricentric feminism has developed over the years. These include, but are not limited to, select theoretical contributions of sig-nificant maternal scholars and theories within the canon of maternal theory, the creation and development of the field of motherhood studies, the meaning and distinction between empowered and feminist mothering, the importance of motherlines in understanding mothering and motherhood, the creation of the theory of matricentric feminism and the subsequent evolving praxis of matricentric feminism, and the complex relationship between the oppressive and empowering dimensions of mothering when considering motherhood as institution, experience, subjectivity, and empowerment.

The feast that Andrea has prepared for you awaits. Enjoy!

—Fiona Joy Green, February 20, 2024

Dr. Fiona Joy Green (she/her/hers) is a cisgender straight feminist mother who believes in the power of revolutionary feminist motherwork. She’s a white settler and holds the position of professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg, located on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Dakota, Dene, and Ojibway-Cree Nations, the homeland of the Métis Nation, and Treaty 1. Fiona is interested in the agency of children and mothers, in gender identities, and in the ability of matroreform and feminist motherlines to contribute to feminist parenting and to matricentric feminism and praxis. Fiona is the sole author of Practicing Feminist Mothering (ARP), and co-editor of eight Demeter Press collections, including the forthcoming The Mother Wave: Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism, and Revolutionizing Motherlines, both co-edited with Andrea O’Reilly.

Works Cited

Collier de Mendonça, Maria. Maternidade e Maternagem: Os Assuntos Pendentes Do Feminismo. Revista Ártemis, vol. 31, nº 1, julho de 2021, doi: 10.22478/ufpb.1807-8214.2021v31n1.54296.

Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement. Matricentric Feminism. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, vol. 10, nos. 1 & 2, 2019.

O’Reilly, Andrea. Maternal Theory: Essential Readings. Demeter Press, 2007.

O’Reilly, Andrea. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice. Demeter Press, 2016.

O’Reilly, Andrea. Maternal Theory: Essential Readings, The 2nd Edition. Demeter Press, 2021.

O’Reilly, Andrea. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice, The 2nd Edition. Demeter Press, 2021.

O’Reilly, Andrea, and Fiona Joy Green, Eds. The Mother Wave: Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism. Demeter Press, forthcoming 2024.

O’Reilly, Andrea, and Fiona Joy Green, Eds. Revolutionizing Motherlines.Demeter Press, forthcoming 2025.

Contents

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 Mother

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 the 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

About the Author

Introduction

Adrienne Rich opened the Foreword to her book Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution with the observation: We know more about the air we breathe, the seas we travel, than about the nature and meaning of motherhood (lix). While close to half a century has passed since the publication of Of Woman Born in 1976, it would seem that we still do not yet fully understand the nature and meaning of motherhood. In her 2018 book Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty, Jacqueline Rose writes: It is still the case that today, in public, the bodily necessities of mothering are brushed under the carpet and/or consigned to another hidden, intimate world (46). Lucy Jones opens her 2023 book Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood noting that when she became pregnant she felt that she had been hoodwinked; that her experiences of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood did not match up with the cultural, social and philo-sophical narratives [she] had grown up with… that [she] had been fundamen-tally misinformed about the maternal experience (3, 4). Realizing that [her] mind had been colonized by inadequate ideas about motherhood, [Jones] desperately searched for ways of understanding what was happening to [her] and for a language to articulate the reality of becoming and being a mother (5). Like Jones, Rose emphasizes how she is always on the lookout for those moments when mothers get to speak the unspeakable, trash the expectations laid upon them, play with other ideas (47). With this collection, In (M)other Words, I seek to continue this conversation on the meaning and nature of motherhood initiated by Rich close to fifty years ago to present, in Rose’s words, other ideas (47) on motherhood so as to, in Jones’s words, find the language to articulate the reality of motherhood (9).

The twenty-five essays of this collection were written between 2009 and 2024 and are presented, more or less, in reverse chronological order, opening with an interview I did in Riga, Latvia in January 2024 and closing with a conversation with Sara Ruddick first published in 2009. Please see Appendix A for the publication information on each chapter. In 2006 I coined the term motherhood studies to acknowledge and demarcate scholarship on mother-hood as a legitimate and autonomous academic discipline, one grounded in the canon of maternal theory, and one explicitly interdisciplinary in research and teaching. In 2007 I published Maternal Theory with the 2nd edition published in 2021 to introduce the essential readings in maternal theory, a subfield of the discipline of motherhood studies. In 2016 I developed the concept of matricentric feminism, a feminism for and about mothers, and in 2021 matricritics, a literary theory and practice for the reading of mother-focused texts. As I explain in Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice, as an undergraduate student of Women’s Studies in the 1980s, I was expected to know feminist theory and was required to study women’s experiences from across a wide range of disciplines. I remember learning the difference between liberal and socialist feminist theory and as well as taking courses as diverse as Women and Film, Women and Literature, Women’s History, Women in Society, and Psychology of Women. And while I was introduced to a variety of topics that pertain to women’s lives and experiences, and differing feminist theories, there was little discussion of motherhood. With the establishment of motherhood studies as a distinct discipline, maternal scholars today must familiarize themselves with the key writers and concepts in maternal theory and examine mothers, mothering, and motherhood across diverse disciplines.

My writing, like most motherhood scholarship, begins with Adrienne Rich’s distinction "between two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on the other: the potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children; and the institution which aims at ensuring that that potential—and all women—shall remain under male control" (lxi). In motherhood studies, the term motherhood refers to the patriarchal institution of motherhood which is male defined and controlled and is deeply oppressive to women, whereas the word mothering refers to women’s experiences of mothering and is female-defined and centred and potentially empowering to women. The reality of patriarchal motherhood thus must be distinguished from the possibility or potentiality of empowered mothering.

This collection explores the oppressive and empowering dimensions of mothering and the complex relationship between the two by considering moth-erhood as institution, experience, subjectivity, and empowerment. Scholars who are interested in motherhood as institution or ideology investigate policies, laws, discourses, and images of patriarchal motherhood, while researchers who are interested in the maternal experience examine the work women do as mothers, an area of study paved with insights derived from Sara Ruddick’s concept of maternal practice. The third category, subjectivity, looks at the effect that becoming a mother has on a woman’s sense of self; in particular how her sense of self is shaped by the institution of motherhood and the experience of mothering. The fourth theme, empowerment, has emerged more recently and is interested in how empowered mothering can challenge and change patriarchal motherhood. Motherhood scholarship, whether its concern is motherhood as institution, experience, or subjectivity, has tended to focus on how motherhood is detrimental to women because of its construction as a patriarchal mandate within these three areas. For example, scholars interested in experience argue that the gender inequities of patriarchal motherhood cause the work of mothering to be exhausting and isolating for women, while those concerned with ideology call attention to the guilt and depression that is experienced by mothers who fail to live up to the impossible ideals of patriarchal motherhood. In contrast, less has been written on the possibility or potentiality of mothering as identified by Rich close to fifty years ago. The point is not lost on Fiona Joy Green who writes: still largely missing from the increasing dialogue and publication around motherhood is a discussion of Rich’s monumental con-tention that even when restrained by patriarchy, motherhood can be a site of empowerment and political activism (31).

This collection considers motherhood as a patriarchal institution in the chapters on Normative Motherhood, Maternal Regret, Pandemic Mothering, Academic Motherhood, and the Motherhood Memoir (Chapters 4, 10, 11, 20, 23), and as empowerment in the chapters on Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism, The Twenty-First-Century Motherhood Movement, Empowered and Feminist Mothering, Feminist Motherlines, and Matricentric Pedagogy, (Chapters 5, 6, 7, 14, 19). Other chapters on Young Mothers, Mothers and Daughters, Mothers and Sons, African American Mothering, Feminist Mother-ing as Maternal Practice (Chapters 13, 16, 17, 18, 24), explore the oppressiveness of the institution of motherhood and the potential for such to be challenged and changed through empowered mothering.

The overall aim of this collection is to present my thinking on mothering and motherhood as it developed over the last fifteen years, from 2009 to 2024. I present this collection as a buffet with only a suggested order on how to read the collection. Unlike a preset dinner menu, the collection invites readers to visit the buffet, read the chapters in a manner and order that appeals to them, perhaps to have the dessert before the soup, or select only from the main course options. If for example, motherhood and feminism is the desired dish, the reader would select chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, or if motherhood and literature is more palatable, the reader would select chapters 1, 2, 9, 22, 23. Each chapter is self-contained and while this leads to some duplication across the chapters, I kept this format so that readers could select and read chapters that were of interest to them without having to have read chapters outside their chapters of interest. This collection includes selected thematic and theoretical reflections on motherhood published between 2009 and 2024 and does not include my writings before 2009 or my publications on motherhood in literature.¹ (The collection does include theoretical reflections on the maternal narrative; see Chapter 9 on matricritics, Chapter 22 on literatures in text and tradition, and Chapter 23 on the motherhood memoir.) As well, the collection explores only some of the many topics in motherhood studies and finally, with the topics that are considered in the collection such is done from my perspective. I encourage readers to have a look at my Maternal Theory to explore other important topics in motherhood studies including Queer Mothering, Trans-Parenting, The Migrant Maternal, Reproductive Justice, The Digital Maternal, and Mothering and Neoliberalism, to name but a few. Also, I ask that readers consult the Works Cited in each chapter to see how the topic under discussion is taken up by other writers and theorists.

Conclusion

In January 2024 while in Vilnius Lithuania for the MotherNet conference Thinking Through Motherhood: Images, Experiences, and Narratives Across Time, Zita Kārkla invited me to discuss my motherhood research in an interview that took place in Riga, Latvia a couple days after the conference. I then decided to revise this book’s Table of Contents and open the collection with this new interview with Kārkla. As I edited the transcribed interview, I realized that this interview, which took place in early 2024 and now opens the collection, responds to the 2009 Conversation with Sara Ruddick that closes the collection. In this conversation I asked Sara whether she thought it was easier in 2009, twenty years after the publication of Maternal Thinking (1990), to capture the pleasures and sorrows of the daily relations with children. Ruddick answers: I would guess that it is easier to write about the ambivalent feelings about children and about the unhappiness of lives with children. It may be more difficult to write about the delight, the pleasures. (515) Compellingly, yet unintentionally, my reflections that conclude the 2024 interview bring us back full circle to Ruddick’s words in the 2009 interview. I commented in the 2024 interview: There is little permission to speak authentically about our love and care for our children. There is little permission to talk about the beauty of motherhood. We may now have permission to talk about maternal anger, maternal regret, and maternal ambivalence, but do we have permission to talk about maternal bliss, maternal desire? It’s still very taboo to talk about our love for our children. But these stories also need to be told and written. (34). Re-reading both Ruddick and my reflections on the difficulty of writing on the delights of mothering, I was reminded of the words that conclude the Coda of Rose’s book. She writes:

We need a [a new narrative] for mothers, one in which the acute pleasure of being a mother, without any need for a denial [of its challenges], would be neither a guilty secret, nor something enviously co-opted by bullies—"You will be happy!", it could be left to get on quietly with its work of making the experience of motherhood more than worth it. (209-210, emphasis in original)

As I selected and revised the 25 essays for this collection, I did not anticipate that the dialogues that open and close this book would bring about a consideration of the pleasures of mothering or that I would conclude this introduction calling for a new maternal narrative that acknowledges the joys of motherhood alongside its sorrows. But, of course, this discussion also began with Rich when, close to 50 years ago, she wrote about the alternation between the bitter resentment and blissful gratification and tenderness [of motherhood] (1). It is my hope that this collection, in exploring both the oppressiveness of the patriarchal institution of motherhood and the emancipatory potential of mothering, provides the (m)other words to move us toward this new narrative of motherhood.

Endnotes

1. My chapters/articles published on Mothers, Mothering, and Motherhood in Literature: 2016-2024:

– "‘How sometimes they may get it wrong:’ The Survival of Black Mothers, the Safekeeping of Children, and the Loss of Homeplace in Caul Baby by Morgan Jenkins." Home(place): Honouring, (Re)membering and (Re)storying the process of Matriarchal Worlding as Kinship. Drs. Jennifer Brant, Whitneé L. Garrett-Walker & Qui Alexander, Eds. Demeter Press, Winter 2025 (forthcoming).

– "Critiquing, Correcting, Defying, and Displacing Normative Motherhood: Reading Five Narratives of Mothers Who Leave as Demon Texts: Hiroshima in the Morning by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Patsy by Nicole Dennis -Benn, The Shame by Makenna Goodman, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins, and When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister." The Missing Mother. Andrea O’Reilly and Martina Mullaney, Eds. Demeter Press, Fall 2024 (forthcoming).

– "Imagining Motherhood in a Post-Apocalyptic World: Reifying and Resisting Normative Motherhood in the Climate-Change Novels Clean Air by Sarah Blake and The New Wilderness by Diane Cook." The Pain Mothers Must Never Expose. Michelann Parr, Ed. Summer ٢٠٢٤, (forth-coming).

– "‘There must be something good about me’: Dystopian Satire, Maternal Resistance, and the Undoing of Normative Motherhood in Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers." Wild with Child: Outlaw Mothers and Feminist Representations of Female Power. Rebecca Jaremko Bromwich and Elena Finestone, Eds. Demeter Press, pp. ١٤٩-١٦٨.

– "‘The Damage Done and May This Madness Be Over’: Exposing and Eradicating Matrophobia through a Reading of the Nanny Trope in the Psychological Thrillers The Nanny and Nanny Dearest." Care(ful) Relation-ships between Mothers and the Caregivers They Hire. Katie Garner and Andrea O’Reilly, Eds. Demeter Press, January 2024, pp. 149-168.

– "‘They both begin with blood, pain, and terror’: Transgressing Normative Motherhood in and through the Contemporary Psychological Thriller, The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy, Little Voices by Vanessa Lillie, and Little Disasters by Sarah Vaughan." Mothering Outside the Lines: Tales of Boundary Busting Mamas. Michelann Parr and BettyAnn Martin, Eds.Demeter Press, 2023, pp. 197-218.

– "The ‘Wildness of Motherhood’: Transforming Maternal Rage, Trans-gressing Patriarchal Motherhood to Realize Maternal Empowerment: A Reading of Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch." Coming into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism. Andrea O’Reilly, Fiona Joy Green and Victoria Bailey, Eds. Demeter Press, 2023, pp. 215-236.

– "‘What Finally Dragged Her under the Water and Who Carried the Spark’: The Intergenerational Trauma of Normative Motherhood in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere." Normative Motherhood: Regulations, Representations, and Reclamations. Andrea O’Reilly, Ed. Demeter Press, 2023, pp. 169-188.

– "‘The Terror of Mothering’: Maternal Ambiguities and Vulnerabilities in Helen Phillips’ The Need and Melanie Golding’s Little Darlings." Monstrous Mothers: Troubling Tropes. Abigail Palko and Andrea O’Reilly, Eds. Dem-eter Press, ٢٠٢١, pp. ٢٤٣-٢٦٨.

– "‘What Is Incomprehensible’: The Myth of Maternal Omniscience and the Judgement of Maternal Culpability in Sue Klebold’s A Mother’s Reckoning and Monique Lépine’s Aftermath." Monstrous Mothers: Troubling Tropes. Abigail Palko and Andrea O’Reilly, Eds. Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 201-222.

– "A ‘Motherhood So White’: Normative Motherhood as Enacted and Resis-ted in the Motherhood Memoir Through a Reading of Nefertiti Austin’s Memoir Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America." Artemis, vol. 31.2, 2021, pp. 35-55.

– "Breaking the Rules of Normative Motherhood and Family: Matrifocality, Motherlines, and the Mask of Motherhood in Sally Hepworth’s The Secret of Midwives and The Family Next Door." Hecate, vol. 45, 1&2, 2019 (published 2020), pp. 43-52.

– "Redemptive Mothering; Reclamation, Absolution, and Deliverance in Emma Donoghue’s Room and The Wonder." Writing Mothers: Narrative Acts of Care, Redemption, and Transformation. BettyAnn Martin and Michelann Parr, Eds. Demeter Press, 2020, pp. 141-166.

– "Matrifocality, Maternal Empowerment, and Maternal Healing: Conceiv-ing Empowered Young Motherhood in Miriam Toews’ Summer of My Amazing Luck." Feminist Perspectives on Young Mothers and Young Mother-ing. Joanne Minaker, Deborah Byrd and Andrea O’Reilly, Eds. Demeter Press, 2019, pp. 207-226.

– "We Need to Talk about Patriarchal Motherhood: Essentialization, Nat-uralization, and Idealization in Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin." Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, vol. 7, no. 1, 2016, pp. 64-81.

Works Cited

Green, Fiona Joy. "Feminist Mothers; Successfully negotiating the tensions between motherhood and mothering. In Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered Mothering. Andrea O’Reilly, Ed. Women’s Press, 2004, pp. 31-42.

Jones, Lucy. Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood. Penguin Random House, 2024.

O’Reilly, Andrea. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice, The 2nd Edition. Demeter Press, 2021.

O’Reilly, Andrea. Maternal Theory Essential Readings, 2nd Edition. Demeter Press, 2021.

Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. W. W. Norton & Company, 2021 (1976).

Rose, Jacqueline. Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty. Farrrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

Ruddick, Sara. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Random House, 1990.

Appendix A

1. "Thinking Through Matricentric Feminism: Interview with Andrea O’Reilly in Riga, Latvia, 26.01.2024, with Zita Kārkla." Punctummagazine, Spring 2024: https://www.punctummagazine.lv/eng/. Published in Latvian. Reprint.

2. Interview: Dr. Andrea O’Reilly and the Motherhood Perspective. Artemis, vol. 31.2, 2021, pp. 12-22. Reprint.

3. Matricentric Feminism. Maternal Theory: Essential Readings. The 2nd Edition. Andrea O’Reilly, Ed. Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 557-476. Reprint.

4. Normative Motherhood. Maternal Theory: Essential Readings. The 2nd Edition. Andrea O’Reilly, Ed. Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 477-492. Revised.

5. Introduction. With Fiona Joy Green and Victoria Baily. Coming into Being: On Mothers Finding and Realizing Feminism. Andrea O’Reilly, Fiona Joy Green and Victoria Bailey, Eds. Demeter Press, 2023, pp. 11-28. Revised.

6. Chapter Two. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice, The 2nd Edition. Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 135-164. Revised.

7. Chapter Three. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice, The 2nd Edition. Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 165-212. Revised.

8. Chapter Four. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice, The 2nd Edition. Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 213-250. Revised.

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.’ Mother Wave: Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism. Andrea O’Reilly and Fiona Joy Green, Eds. September 2024, Forthcoming. Reprint.

10. Maternal Regret. Maternal Theory: Essential Readings. The 2nd Edition. Andrea O’Reilly, Ed. Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 567-578. Reprint.

11. Pandemic Mothering. With Fiona Joy Green. Maternal Theory: Essential Readings. The 2nd Edition. Andrea O’Reilly, Ed. Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 913-926. Reprint.

12. ‘Certainly Not an Equal Opportunity Pandemic’: COVID-19 and Its Im-pact on Mothers’ Carework, Health, and Employment. Mothers, Mothering, and COVID-19: Dispatches from a Pandemic. Andrea O’Reilly and Fiona Joy Green, Eds. Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 41-52. Reprint.

13. Introduction. With Joanne Minaker and Deborah Byrd. Feminist Per-spectives on Young Mothers and Young Mothering. Deborah Byrd, Andrea O’Reilly, and Joanne Minaker, Eds. Demeter Press, 2019, pp. 9-31. Revised.

14. In Search of the Goddess: Creating a Feminist Motherline for Mother-Daughter Connection and Empowerment. With Casey O’Reilly-Conlin. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, vol. 9, no. 1, 2018, pp. 38-60. Reprint.

15. ‘Have your Cake and Eat It Too’: Challenging and Changing Normative Gender Roles Through Partnerships. After the Happily Ever After: Empow-ering Women and Mothers in Relationships. Linda Rose Ennis, Ed. Demeter Press, 2016, pp. 234-245. Reprint.

16. Across the Divide: Contemporary Anglo-American Feminist Theory on the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Mothers and Daughters. Dannabang Kuwabong, Janet MacLennan, and Dorsía Smith Silva, Eds. Demeter Press, 2017, pp. 91-111. Reprint.

17. In Black and White: African American and Anglo-American Feminist Perspectives on Mothers and Sons. Mothers and Sons: Centering Mother Knowledge. Besi Brillian Mukonja and Wanda Thomas Bernard, Eds. Demeter Press, 2016, pp. 14-44. Reprint.

18. African American Mothering: ‘Home is Where the Revolution Is.’ Mothers, Mothering and Motherhood Across Cultural Difference. Andrea O’Reilly, Ed. Demeter Press, 2014, pp. 93-118. Reprint.

19. ‘It Saved My Life’: The National Association of Mothers’ Centers, Matri-centric Pedagogy and Maternal Empowerment. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, vol. 4, no. 1, spring/summer 2013, pp. 185-209. Reprint.

20. Academic Motherhood in a Post-Second Wave Context: Framing the Conversation. With Lynn O’Brien Hallstein. Academic Motherhood in a Post Second Wave Context: Challenges, Strategies, Possibilities. Andrea O’Reilly and Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, Eds. Demeter Press, 2012, pp. 1-46. Revised.

21. ‘I Should Have Married Another Man’; ‘I Couldn’t Do What I Do Without Him: Heterosexual Intimate Relationships’ and Their Impact on Mothers’ Success in Academe. Academic Motherhood in a Post Second Wave Context: Challenges, Strategies, Possibilities. Andrea O’Reilly and D. Lynn Hallstein O’Brien, Eds. Demeter Press, 2012, pp. 197-213. Reprint.

22. Introduction. With Liz Podnieks. Textual Mothers, Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women’s Literature. Elizabeth Podnieks and Andrea O’Reilly, Eds. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010, pp. 1-28. Revised.

23. Biting the Hand that Feeds You: New Momism and the Motherhood Memoir. Textual Mothers, Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women’s Literatures. Elizabeth Podnieks and Andrea O’Reilly, Eds. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010, pp. 238-248. Reprint.

24. A Conversation with Sara Ruddick. Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, Practice. Andrea O’Reilly, Ed. Demeter Press, 2009, pp. 14-38. Reprint.

25. Maternal Authority and Social Acceptability of Children; Feminist Mothering as Maternal Practice. Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, Practice. Andrea O’Reilly, Ed. Demeter Press, 2009, pp. 217-229. Reprint.

1.

Thinking Through Matricentric Feminism

Interview with Andrea O’Reilly in Riga, Latvia, 26.01.2024.

with Zita Kārkla

How did you come to motherhood studies? Did it relate to aspects in your personal life, your professional life, or events unfolding in the world?

The feminist slogan the personal is political answers this question. In 1983 when I was completing the fourth year of my Honours BA at the age of 22, I found myself pregnant. Certainly not planned! We decided to have the baby. My son Jesse will be 40 this year, 2024, and I am still with the fellow, his father, 42 years later. We ended up having two more children, 1986 and 1989. The moment of becoming a mother was a very radicalizing moment for me in many ways. The first: I was in my fourth year of my Honors in women’s studies, and I hadn’t noticed until I had a child how invisible motherhood was in the courses I was taking. I didn’t see this until I became a mother. I had taken 20 courses: women and health, women and work, women in film, women in literature, women in anthropology, women in sociology etc., and you would think that in all those courses, with a full four-year Honours degree, I would have encountered motherhood, yet, I hadn’t. The few times it was encountered, it was from a very negative perspective: motherhood is oppressive, real feminists don’t become mothers. When I became pregnant it seemed I got more words of pity than congratulations. People were like: what’s a good feminist like you doing getting pregnant?; you have gone over to the other side.; you betrayed the cause. Maybe not in those exact words, but close enough. So, for me, it was how much motherhood was invisible in academia, how many feminists saw it as a sellout, as something oppressive, as something reactionary, conservative. I had my son in 1984. I went on to do a Master’s degree (1985), then I went on to do a PhD (1986) in English literature and the more courses I took, I became more and more aware how absent and denigrated motherhood was in the academy. So, in 1990, while still a grad student, my department allowed me to develop a course on motherhood, the first course on motherhood in North America. It was a full course from September to April and I have taught it now for 30 plus years. I had my first child in 1984, my second child in 1986, my third child in 1989. I started my PhD in 1986 when my son was 2 and I was 6 months pregnant with my first daughter. Making motherhood visible has become my calling, my passion, my purpose in life. It was just a necessity. After I developed the course in 1990, I founded MIRCI—Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement—in 1997. It was a research centre I ran for 20 plus years, from 1997 to 2020. In 1999, I launched the first feminist scholarly peer-reviewed journal in motherhood studies, Journal of the Motherhood Initiative. Our 25th anniversary is this year. And then in 2006 I launched Demeter Press, which is the first and still only feminist press on motherhood. They were all motivated by the need and the necessity of studying motherhood with respect and care and attention. So that’s how I ended up here. It was really driven by my own despair and desire; I needed a community, I needed motherhood to be studied, I needed other sister maternal scholars beside me.

Mothers and motherhood are the unfinished business of feminism, you write in your book Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice that was published 2016, with the 2nd edition published in 2021. Has matricentric feminism been incorporated into academic feminism? Has the feminist community embraced it?

No. In 2006 I defined the term motherhood studies, an interdisciplinary field that puts motherhood at its centre, studying motherhood from anthropology to zoology, if you will. In 2007 I published my massive collection Maternal Theory, which included the 50 must-read theorists in the field, and in 2021 I published the second edition. My concept of matricentric feminism came a bit later. I increasingly realized that motherhood was completely sidelined by feminism. I realized this when I took courses as a student, but now I was also hearing the same from so many motherhood scholars. I was running conferences and women would come up to me and share their stories of how when they told their colleagues they were doing motherhood studies, they would just roll their eyes and dismiss them. I kept hearing stories and stories and stories about how feminist conferences were not welcoming to motherhood scholars and their publications weren’t welcome. So, in 2016 I did a study [See Chapter 8 of this collection: Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater: The Disavowal and Disappearance of Motherhood in 20th and 21st Century Academic Feminism] with a fabulous research assistant, and I thought, either I am paranoid, or I am onto something. We looked at the representation of motherhood in 5 key women’s studies journals like Signs, Frontiers, Feminist Studies etc., we looked at representations of motherhood at the National Women’s Studies Association’s conferences, which is a big, national conference 1000 people go to every year, and we looked at it in 50 introductions to women’s studies courses, in Canada and US. The final thing we looked at was 10 Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies textbooks. And what we realized was that the numbers were shockingly low, they were between 1 and 4 percent. So, like 3 percent of women’s studies journals had an article on motherhood or book review on motherhood. 2.7 percent of papers presented were on motherhood and in intro texts it was 2.1 percent. I did this study in 2016 and I think that it proved that I was right and not just paranoid. Motherhood is really marginalized in curricula and publications, and conferences and course texts, of women’s studies. In my book Matricentric Feminism I spend some time trying to figure out why [See Chapter 8 of this collection: Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater: The Disavowal and Disappearance of Motherhood in 20th and 21st Century Academic Feminism]. I just received a small grant from York University to replicate the study in 2024. The study will explore whether things have improved since 2016. My sense is that the answer is no. In fact, things might have gotten worse. But I want to have updated data to make my case because people say: that was 8 years ago, maybe it is better. No, it’s not better. But I need the data to prove this. I will be doing the project summer 2024.

So, matricentric feminism is still considered peripheral within the realm of academic feminism?

It’s intuitive and anecdotal at this point, but I have spoken with so many motherhood scholars and they are all sharing the same story. I have heard from so many people that can’t get a motherhood article published. With the journal Signs, you can count on one hand how many articles they have done on motherhood over the last 10 years. In fact, two colleagues just emailed me, and they told me they submitted their articles on motherhood to the big feminist journals and they were both rejected. And I know both women and they are very strong scholars. Also, motherhood books are not being reviewed in these journals. There is a great article by Samira Kawash who did a study in 2010 and said what I am saying now. She said that it is absolutely shocking that none of these journals had reviewed a Demeter Press book. I don’t know if this is the case in Europe, I am talking from a North American perspective. Things are bleak, motherhood is still very peripheral to the discipline of feminist theory.

Has the notion of matricentric feminism been expanded?

I coined the term in 2016, so it’s quite recent. Fiona Joy Green and I have a book coming in September, The Mother Wave: Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism with 19 chapters using matricentric feminism from every imaginable discipline, from religious studies to performance art to liter-ature, film, theory. More than 25 writers from around the globe. The book is entitled the Mother Wave because we believe this is a new wave of feminism, that the mother wave is happening now.

When discussing matricentric feminism, you draw on the concept of a matrifocal narrative, particularly as it has been developed in maternal literary theory. Why do you think it is important to pay attention to mothering and motherhood in literature?

My favourite question. My PhD is in English. For a long while I drifted away from my academic training. I became a sociologist and a theorist. But my passion has always been literature. During the pandemic I was on a sabbatical, and I was supposed to be doing a large research project on Older Young Mothers and travelling across Canada interviewing moms. Well, it didn’t happen because of the pandemic. I was thinking—what I am going to do for a year, I can’t travel. So I went back to my first love. I am now working on a book. I have written 13 chapters on 27 books with about another 5 chapters planned.¹ Eventually I will bring them together to form a monograph. I am looking at matrifocal narratives in books published from 2010 and onward that put mothering at their centre. During the pandemic I just ordered books and read and read, and then eventually, I started choosing which books I would write on. I have written on 27 books, and I’ve got another 8 or so texts still to write on. I am looking at how, through literature, we can interrogate normative motherhood. How, in liter-ature, we can uncover how normative motherhood is oppressive, what it does to women, what is wrong with it, and what we can do about it. And how the mother characters resisted, or maybe they didn’t resist, and how did they mother against or in compliance with normative motherhood? What’s exciting is that there is so much literature now that is mother-centred. When I had my children in the 1980s, there was virtually nothing; you could count the number of mother-centred texts on one hand. Now, almost every other week I am picking up a book review and, oh my heavens, there is another book I should read. There is just an abundance of matrifocal narratives out since 2010, that’s why I picked 2010, I think that’s a pivotal year. I have published a chapter on mothers in psychological thrillers [The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy, Little Voices by Vanessa Lillie, and Little Disasters by Sarah Vaughan] and one on nanny novels [The Nanny by Gilly MacMillan and Nanny Dearest by Flora Collins]. I just finished a chapter on mothers who leave. I look at 5 texts [Hiroshima in the Morning by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn, The Shame by Makenna Goodman, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins, and When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister] about mothers who leave motherhood and consider if and how their leaving serves to critique the motherhood institution. The chapter that I am currently working on [Queer Mothers and Queering Motherhood in Francesca T. Royster’s Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance, and Kristen Arnett’s With Teeth] looks at two novels about queer mothers and queer mothering and explores how they do or do not interrogate normative motherhood.

How do you choose the themes that you are going to research?

It’s such a good question. I can’t explain it, the text just speaks to me. I pick up a book and I start reading it and I think: I am going to write about it. There is something going on in this text, and I must figure it out, I must unpack it. I don’t write on all the books I read; I read 8 books and maybe write on 2 of them, I don’t know. During the pandemic I just read. And then I started thinking something is going on here. I am aiming for a diverse representation of the maternal experience including 3 novels by Asian American writers along with several Black writers, Cuban, African American, Jamaican, and an Indigenous writer—I’ve got Canadian, Irish, Japanese, Australian, US, UK, and now hopefully Latvia, with the novel Soviet Milk, can join that conversation.

In our conversation at the conference, you mentioned that you would like to include a novel from Latvia in your book. My question is about diversity— there are so many things that could be included in such a book, where do you draw a line?

First are the limitations of language. I unfortunately only read in English, which I am very embarrassed about. Most Canadians, outside of our French province Quebec, tend to be monolingual, unlike Europe where many people speak several languages. A student recently introduced me to the South African novel An Usual Grief by Yewande Omotoso. I haven’t read it yet, but I am thinking I may include it. I am not going to make any claims to universality, but I want more than just North American narratives. We know enough about that. Everything is so US based, even Canada gets marginalized, most texts are US based. I really wanted to push against this. I really try to push against that terrible US preoccupation in scholarship. I also think that it is important to write on new writers. Everybody has written about Toni Morrison. I think that we need to start writing about other books.

In your presentation at MotherNet conference, you looked at a climate change novel Clean Air by Sarah Blake, concluding that, while retreating to a fantasy of a better world, it also presents normative motherhood as both natural and inevitable in a post-apocalyptic world. Why did you choose a fantasy novel for your analysis?

Since I just randomly started reading, I ended up reading a lot of different genres. I have included memoirs, of course, I am doing psychological thrillers, I am doing magical realism, I am doing speculative fiction. I am really trying to read a lot of genres. I think that I have about 10 genres represented. I am also looking at popular fiction. I am really interested in what is happening in those best sellers that the average woman is reading. I am really interested in that because I think the problem with the high literature—and I find that term problematic —is that it is not what the average person is reading. My dissertation was on Toni Morrison, which was eventually published as a book, but I don’t think that the average woman is reading Toni Morrison. She is a hard writer to read. So, I am really interested in those more accessible novels. I am really interested in domestic noir fiction. I am really interested in popular fiction and how it takes up motherhood, because they are the books that women are reading.

So these books might have a greater impact on women’s lives?

Yes. I would love to do a study on that, to interview women who have read some of those books and see if that has changed the way they see motherhood. That would be a fascinating study. I can’t do it right now, but maybe I or somebody else can take it up because I think that these popular books on motherhood are making an impact. People are reading the books, they’re part of book clubs. And the interrogations of motherhood in these popular novels are quite radical. I did a chapter ["‘They both begin with blood, pain, and terror’: Transgressing Normative Motherhood in and through the Contemporary Psychological Thriller, The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy, Little Voices by Vanessa Lillie, and Little Disasters by Sarah Vaughan"], on the popular novels The Perfect Mother (2018), Little Voices (2019), and Little Disasters (2020), real page turners, very plot-driven, not really dense and rich in texture, but hugely subversive. I think that something is going on there, that these popular novels are interrogating motherhood in a way that high fiction is not. I find that fascinating. And I am not sure why, but motherhood is so central in so many of these page-turners in popular fiction. Maybe in the introduction of my book, I will explore that question. I don’t think that I have an answer now. But I am going to conclude that we should think about how important these novels are and not just dismiss them. The final section on popular literature at the [MotherNet] conference was so good. We talked about how popular fiction gets dismissed in the academy. There are no articles on these books in the academy, right? Nobody writes about them. For most of these novels, there is no scholarly discourse. When I did research for my chapters on motherhood in popular fiction, there were no scholarly articles on any of these books, so I was the first. But they are worth reading and they are worth thinking about and worth writing articles on. Is Soviet Milk considered more of a scholarly literary work?

Yes, absolutely. But at the same time it is widely read.

You mentioned that it’s both voices—a mother’s and a daughter’s, right? Until recently most of the texts, and that’s not my term, it is Maureen Reddy’s term, were daughter-centric. Most novels were about what it meant to be mothered. And many of them were so mother blaming, disturbingly so. Most the novels I am working with are mother-centred. There are few that go between mother and daughter, that’s why I am excited about this book, to see how much the mother’s voice is conveyed.

Matrifocal narrative, in your analysis, is closely connected to unmasking motherhood. Is there one mask or different masks of motherhood?

That’s such a good question. It is not my term, it’s Susan Maushart’s, but that’s what I think mother narratives are doing. That is my argument. I have a theory that I call matricritics and it is a theory of how to read mother focused texts. I have been thinking on it for several years and my chapter on matricritics