Imagining Motherhood in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Literature [Hardcover]

Imagining Motherhood in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Literature undertakes a comparative transnational reading to develop more expansive literary models of good mothering. Abigail L. Palko argues that Irish and Caribbean literary representations of non-normative mothering practices do not reflect transgressive or dangerous mothering but are rather cultural negotiations of the definition of a good mother. This original book demonstrates the sustained commitment to countering the dominant ideologies of maternal self-sacrifice foundational to both Irish and Caribbean nationalist rhetoric, offering instead the possibility of integrating maternal agency into an effective model of female citizenship.

Table of Contents

 

Introduction: Embryonic Beginnings            

Chapter 1  A mother-of-sufferer: Subversive Mothering in the Caribbean and Irish Traditions 

Part I: Rejecting Motherhood

Chapter 2  The Traumatized Not-Mother    

Chapter 3  The Motherless Not-Mother       

Part II: Redefining Motherhood        

Chapter 4  The Lesbian Daughter    

Chapter 5  The Lesbian Mother                   

Conclusion: If you cant trust me with choice, how can you trust me with a child?     &l“: