Open this publication in new window or tab >>2023 (English)In: Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing / [ed] Helena Wahlström Henriksson, Anna Williams & Margaretha Fahlgren, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, p. 1-15Chapter in book (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
This chapter introduces the volume by outlining some crucial scholarly histories: the feminist study of motherhood and mothering, and the literary study of mothers in fiction and life writing, across many differences. Since mothers, motherhood, and mothering not only are defined by physical and material experiences but also take shape in narratives—in stories and recorded accounts—these also need to be continuously studied and theorized if we are to understand the culturally specific meanings of motherhood. The chapter then introduces each of the separate studies in the volume. These variously demonstrate that literary representations of mothers and mothering foreground the ways that parenthood and parenting for women are imbricated with dimensions like class, race, age, and nationality, as well as how motherhood is connected to living a heterosexual, lesbian, queer, or trans everyday life. In original analyses of a range of representations, from absent/missing mothers to highly present ones, the studies that comprise this book engage in a dialogue with the previous research, raising questions about how motherhood and mothering are marked by absence and/or presence and by profound ambivalences, about how maternal perspectives and voices gain space or mix with filial voices in the narratives, and about how mothers are constructed in relation to ideals and norms of motherhood.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023
Series
Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, ISSN 2731-6440, E-ISSN 2731-6459
Keywords
motherhood, fiction, life writing
National Category
General Literature Studies
Research subject
Literature
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-500798 (URN)10.1007/978-3-031-17211-3_1 (DOI)978-3-031-17210-6 (ISBN)978-3-031-17213-7 (ISBN)978-3-031-17211-3 (ISBN)
Funder
EU, Horizon 2020, 952366Uppsala University
2023-04-252023-04-252023-04-25Bibliographically approved