Traces Morrison's theory of African American mothering as it is articulated in her novels, essays, speeches, and interviews. Traces Morrison’s theory of African American mothering as it is articulated in her novels, essays, speeches, and interviews. Mothering is a central issue for feminist theory, and motherhood is also a persistent presence in the work of Toni Morrison. Examining Morrison’s novels, essays, speeches, and interviews, Andrea O’Reilly illustrates how Morrison builds upon black women’s experiences of and perspectives on motherhood to develop a view of black motherhood that is, in terms of both maternal identity and role, radically different from motherhood as practiced and prescribed in the dominant culture. Motherhood, in Morrison’s view, is fundamentally and profoundly an act of resistance, essential and integral to black women’s fight against racism (and sexism) and their ability to achieve well-being for themselves and their culture. The power of motherhood and the empowerment of mothering are what make possible the better world we seek for ourselves and for our children. This, argues O’Reilly, is Morrison’s maternal theory―a politics of the heart. “As an advocate of ‘a politics of the heart,’ O’Reilly has an acute insight into discerning any threat to the preservation and continuation of traditional African American womanhood and values … Above all, Toni Morrison and Motherhood, based on Andrea O’Reilly’s methodical research on Morrison’s works as well as feminist critical resources, proffers a useful basis for understanding Toni Morrison’s works. It certainly contributes to exploring in detail Morrison’s rich and complex works notable from the perspectives of nurturing and sustaining African American maternal tradition.” ― African American Review “O’Reilly boldly reconfigures hegemonic western notions of motherhood while maintaining dialogues across cultural differences.” ― Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering “Andrea O’Reilly examines Morrison’s complex presentations of, and theories about, motherhood with admirable rigor and a refusal to simplify, and the result is one of the most penetrating and insightful studies of Morrison yet to appear, a book that will prove invaluable to any scholar, teacher, or reader of Morrison.” ― South Atlantic Review “…it serves as a sort of annotated bibliography of nearly all the major theoretical work on motherhood and on Morrison as an author … anyone conducting serious study of either Toni Morrison or motherhood, not to mention the combination, should read [this book] ... O’Reilly’s exhaustive research, her facility with theories of Anglo-American and Black feminism, and her penetrating analyses of Morrison’s works result in a highly useful scholarly read.” ― Literary Mama “By tracing both the metaphor and literal practice of mothering in Morrison’s literary world, O’Reilly conveys Morrison’s vision of motherhood as an act of resistance.” ― American Literature “Motherhood is critically important as a recurring theme in Toni Morrison’s oeuvre and within black feminist and feminist scholarship. An in-depth analysis of this central concern is necessary in order to explore the complex disjunction between Morrison’s interviews, which praise black mothering, and the fiction, which presents mothers in various destructive and self-destructive modes. Kudos to Andrea O’Reilly for illuminating Morrison’s ‘maternal standpoint’ and helping readers and critics understand this difficult terrain. Toni Morrison and Motherhood is also valuable as a resource that addresses and synthesizes a huge body of secondary literature.” ― Nancy Gerber, author of Portrait of the Mother-Artist: Class and Creativity in Contemporary American Fiction “In addition to presenting a penetrating and original reading of Toni Morrison, O’Reilly integrates the evolving scholarship on motherhood in dominant and minority cultures in a review that is both a composite of commonalities and a clear representation of differences.” ― Elizabeth Bourque Johnson, University of Minnesota Andrea O’Reilly is Associate Professor in the School of Women’s Studies at York University and President of the Association for Research on Mothering. She is the author and editor of several books on mothering, including (with Sharon Abbey) Mothers and Daughters: Connection, Empowerment, and Transformation and Mothers and Sons: Feminism, Masculinity, and the Struggle to Raise Our Sons.

Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart

Humor & Entertainment

O'Reilly, Andrea

Movies

State Univ of New York Pr

Traces Morrison's theory of African American mothering as it is articulated in her novels, essays, speeches, and interviews.

State University of New York Press

This anthology, the first on the 21st century motherhood movement,includes seven sections: Becoming a Mother; Maternal Identities; Maternal Advocacy; Maternal Activism; Violence, Militarism, War and Peace; Social Change and Social Justice; Writing/Researching/ Performing Motherhood and features more than eighty motherhood organizations from around the globe. Each chapter discusses the context, history, mandate of the organization and examines the organization s activities, challenges, future goals, and its relationship to the larger motherhood movement. The introduction provides an overview of the history and ideological frameworks of the 21st century motherhood movement, discusses the challenges and possibilities of maternalism, details the specific practices and strategies of 21st century maternal activism, and considers such in relation to feminist theory and practice. This book affirms that the 21st century motherhood movement is an autonomous and distinct social movement that makes possible a much needed and long overdue mother-centred theory and politic of feminism.

The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How to Do It

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Demeter Press

Contributors detail what it means to be an academic mother and to think about academic motherhood, while also exploring both the personal and specific institutional challenges academic women face, the multifaceted strategies different academic women are implementing to manage those challenges, and investigating different theoretical possibilities for how we think about academic motherhood.

Academic Motherhood in a Post Second Wave Context

Politics & Social Sciences

Hallstein O'Brien, Lynn

Sociology

The oppressive and the empowering dimensions of maternity, as well as the complex relationship between the two, first identified by Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born, has been the focus of feminist scholarship on motherhood over the last three decades. While feminist research on motherhood has focused on many topics, these studies have been informed and shaped by larger inquiries: namely, how do we challenge patriarchal motherhood? How do we create feminist mothering? And finally, how are the two aims interconnected? Rocking the Cradle, composed of twelve essays, will explore these questions.

Rocking the Cradle; Thoughs on Motherhood, Feminism and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering

Social Sciences

AmazonUs/INDPB

Theory on mothers, mothering and motherhood has emerged as a distinct body of knowledge within Motherhood Studies and Feminist Theory more generally. This collection, the first ever anthology on maternal theory, introduces readers to this rich and diverse tradition of maternal theory. Composed of 50 chapters and covering more than three decades of scholarship, Maternal Theory includes all the must read theorists on motherhood. Writers include: Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Sara Ruddick, Alice Walker, Barbara Katz Rothman, bell hooks, Sharon Hays, Patricia Hill-Collins, Julia Kristeva, Kim Anderson, Audre Lorde, Ellen Lewin, Daphne de Marneffe, Ariel Gore, Ann Crittenden, Judith Warner and many more. Maternal Theory is essential reading for anyone interested in motherhood as experience, ideology, and identity.

Maternal Theory Essential Readings

Women's Studies

The year 2009 marks twenty years since the publication of Sara Ruddick s monumental text Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace, a book that is regarded, along with Adrienne Rich s Of Woman Born, as the most significant work in maternal scholarship and the new field of Motherhood Studies. What made Maternal Thinking so life-changing and ground-breaking was that it foregrounded what all mothers know: motherwork is inherently and profoundly an intellectual activity and theorized the obvious: Mothers think. This volume, published to commemorate and celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Maternal Thinking, explores the impact and influence this book has had on maternal scholarship and revisits what motherhood scholars regard as the pivotal insights of Ruddick s text: motherwork is a practice that gives rise to and is informed by maternal thinking ; mothering, as a practice, is composed of and characterized by particular characteristics; this work is not defined by or reducible to gender; and maternal thinking makes possible a politics a peace. The volume includes 17 contributors from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, sociology, literature, philosophy, education, women s studies and psychology and features a conversation with and an epilogue by Sara Ruddick.

Maternal Thinking; Philosophy, Politics, Practice

The book argues that the category of mother is distinct from the category of woman, and that many of the problems mothers face social, economic, political, cultural, psychological, and so forth are specific to women's role and identity as mothers. Indeed, mothers are oppressed under patriarchy as women and as mothers. Consequently, mothers need a feminism of their own, one that positions mothers' concerns as the starting point for a theory and politic of empowerment. O'Reilly terms this new mode of feminism matricentic feminism and the book explores how it is represented and experienced in theory, activism, and practice. The chapter on maternal theory examines the central theoretical concepts of maternal scholarship while the chapter on activism considers the twenty-first century motherhood movement. Feminist mothering is likewise examined as the specific practice of matricentric feminism and this chapter discusses various theories and strategies on and for maternal empowerment. Matricentric feminism is also examined in relation to the larger field of academic feminism; here O'Reilly persuasively shows how matricentric feminism has been marginalized in academic feminism and considers the reasons for such exclusion and how such may be challenged and changed.

Matricentric Feminism

<div>Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond asks and considers: What is feminist parenting? Is it something for all parents? What does it mean to be a feminist parent in practice? The collection aims to fill a gap on feminist parenting in the existing literature by bringing timely post-Western perspectives. More specifically, the anthology's main contribution is its explicit focus on feminist parenting from the margins to the global periphery: from Africa and its diaspora, from the Global South to Europe and America. The 27 parents from diverse backgrounds, walks of life, and countries gathered in this anthology share powerful responses to the above questions by narrating their experiences of some of the challenges, dilemmas, promises, and compromises of parenting with a feminist perspective. The volume is one of the first collections published with first-person essays describing very touching, beautiful, and sometimes painful stories of what it means and more importantly what it costs to become a feminist parent with an intersectional approach. In doing so, the authors of this book aim at (re)claiming parenting as a necessarily political terrain for subversion, radical transformation, and resistance to patriarchal oppression and sexism.</div>

Feminist Parenting.Perspectives from Africa and Beyond

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Salla Dieng, Rama

Women's Health

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 m

Monstrous Mothers: Troubling Tropes

Palko, Abigail

Literary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by O'Reilly, Andrea. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by O'Reilly, Andrea

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by O'Reilly, Andrea. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart

Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart

The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How to Do It

Academic Motherhood in a Post Second Wave Context

Rocking the Cradle; Thoughs on Motherhood, Feminism and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering

Maternal Theory Essential Readings

Maternal Thinking; Philosophy, Politics, Practice

Matricentric Feminism

Feminist Parenting.Perspectives from Africa and Beyond

Monstrous Mothers: Troubling Tropes