Narrating Motherhood(s), Breaking the Silence

Feminist theory on motherhood has successfully transformed mothers into subjects of their own discourse, recognized the historical, heterogeneous and socially constructed origins of their life experience while, at the same time, widening our understanding of the notion of mothering. This collection combines a literary and a wider cultural perspective from which to look at the topic of the representation of other or forgotten motherhoods. Mothers who have been forced to live exiled and away from their children, women who after trying to conceive, get pregnant but discover they cannot bear to become mothers, or even literary characters based on an autobiographical experience of a sexually abusive mother. The essays critically point out how writing becomes a tool to think and write about the many aspects of motherhood such as an idealized maternal experience versus the real one or the accepted stereotypes of the good mother and the bad mother.

Autorentext

The Editor: Silvia Caporale-Bizzini is Associate Professor of English Literature and Critical Theory, Director of the Women's Studies Centre at Alicante University (Spain). She has co-edited/edited various books and has published articles and essays on cultural theory and contemporary literature in English. She is currently working on the relationship between motherhood, identity and representation in contemporary British women writers.

Inhalt

Contents: Sara Velasco-Arias: Unconscious Representations of Motherhood(s). Traditions and Contradictions - Teresa M. Dobryzkowski: Mothering Beyond the Usual Boundaries: Living at Ground Zero with Chronic Illness Superimposed with Catastrophic Life Events - Mónica Moreno-Seco/Alicia Mira-Abad: Motherhood(s) and Memoirs Written by Women in the Spanish Exile - Helena Establier: The Voice(s) of the Mother in Contemporary Spanish Narrative Written by Women: Esther Tusquets's El mismo mar de todos los veranos and Other Motherhoods - Silvia Caporale-Bizzini: Breaking the Boundaries Between Life and Fiction: The Mother-Daughter Tale(s) in Jenny Diski's Like Mother - Josefina Bueno-Alonso: Representations of Motherhood: Between Absence and Rebelliousness - Amaya Fernández-Menicucci: The Face and the Thread: Motherhood, Daughterhood and Identity in Maya Angelou's Autobiography.