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