Saturday, September 03, 2011

Mothering Narratives

Susan at Pages Turned posted a response to a comment I had made on one of her posts about Mothering Narratives. I thought I should post the list I compiled with my professor's help for one of my PhD reading fields on what I was calling Mothering Narratives but has become more Maternal Feminism.

Aido, Ama Ata, No Sweetness Here


Alvarez, Julia, In the Name of Salome


Armstrong, Heather, It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita

Atwood, Margaret, The Handmaid’s Tale

Bryant, Dorothy, Ella Price’s Journal

Chopin, Kate, The Awakening

Chua, Amy, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Cixous, Helene, The Day I Wasn't There

Clausen, Jan, Sinking, Stealing

Drabble, Margaret, The Millstone

Emecheta, Buchi, The Joys of Motherhood

Fern, Fanny, Ruth Hall: a Domestic Tale of the Present Time

Foster, Hannah, Coquette

Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins, The Revolt of “Mother” and other stories


Gaskell, Elizabeth, Ruth

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Jacobs, Harriet, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Jocelin, Elizabeth, “The Mothers Legacie to her Unborne Childe”

Kincaid, Jamaica, Autobiography of my Mother

Kingsolver, Barbara, The Bean Trees

Kristeva, Julia “Stabat Mater,” “Women’s Time,” “A New Type of Intellectual: The Dissident”

Lamott, Anne, Operating Instructions


Larsen, Nella, Quicksand

Miller, Sue, The Good Mother

Morrison, Toni, Beloved

Olsen, Tillie, Silences

Ozick, Cynthia, The Shawl

Pennington, Sarah, Lady, “An Unfortunate Mother’s Advice to her Absent Daughters”

Petry, Anne, The Street

Rich, Adrienne, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience & Institution

Rowson, Susanna, Charlotte Temple

Silko, Leslie Marmo, Ceremony (I've decided to read Louise Erdrich's Tracker, instead.)

Smith, Lee Fair and Tender Ladies

St Vincent Millay, Edna, "The Ballad of the Harp Weaver"

Steingraber, Sandra, Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Tyler, Anne, Ladder of Years

Wolf, Naomi, Misconceptions

Yamanaka, Lois-Ann, Father of the Four Passages

Theory: (I was hoping for mostly novels, but had to get some of this in here, too.)

Chodoraw, Nancy, Reproduction of Mothering

Collins, Patricia Hill, Black Feminist Thought

Crittenden, Ann, The Price of Motherhood

Folbre, Nancy, Invisible Heart

Freedman, Estelle, No Turning Back

Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, Women and Ecomomics

Hayden, Dolores, Grand Domestic Revolution

Ketrak, Ketu, Politics of the Female Body

Ruddick, Sara, Maternal Thinking

Walker, Alice, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens

Williams, Joan, Unbending Gender: Why Work and Family Conflict and What to Do About It.

4 comments:

Loma Kath said...

Fun to see your list -- thanks for posting it... and I clicked through to the previous post as well. I've only read a few of your list. My one comment is that I didn't really like "The Good Mother" -- it's a fun mystery novel, but ultimately doesn't pay off for me. I never connected to her as a mother. Would not consider it a book about mother relationships... at least not in my memory. I'll be interested to hear your take. "Beloved" definitely, and "Incidents" which i've read. As well as Anne Lamott.

Lomagirl said...

I didn't know you'd read "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." I read it in juxtaposition with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" which I'd never read before. Quite a difference in authorial viewpoint. "The Good Mother" is an odd book- it's funny you say that about not liking it- someone in the comments on the other post said she didn't connect with that mother either. I think it's about a woman trying to figure out who she is apart from being a mother- she's allowed daughter, mother and wife to be her identity for her whole life. It's kind of- what happens when your role of mother is gone.

morningstar said...

Thanks for the post. My favorite part of nursing was an excuse to sit and read :)

Lomagirl said...

Oops- I always get "The Good Mother" confused with "Ladder of Years." TGM is not really a mystery novel- it's really about what divorce is like in the 1970's for a woman with a child. The woman is described as a good mother, and she is, in a way, but she makes some bad decisions. It's very much a novel of it's time.