Synopsis
Revolutionizing Motherlines reflects upon and troubles current and historical understandings of Naomi Ruth Lowinsky’ s concept of the motherline that connects mothers to their female ancestors. Complicated histories of erasure and threads of hope are tied together with intellectually engaging and emotionally resonant dialogues about maternal lineage to illuminate previously silenced motherlines of diverse abilities, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, mothering identities, family forms, and parenting practices. The introduction of the concept of “ mothervine” , an adaptation of Lowinsky’ s motherline, creates a powerful image of winding vines and roots with pruned ends and overgrowths that inform how matricentric feminist scholars can deconstruct patriarchal concepts. By using innovative feminist images and language to define and express experiences of mothering, it revises the past and intervenes in ongoing debates about how to de-centre cisnormative models of lineage. Revolutionizing Motherlines creates a richness of meaning for those engaged in motherwork, and offers new insights into methodology, theory-building, and praxis of maternal scholarship.
About the Author
Dr. Andrea O’ Reilly, full professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’ s Studies at York University, is internationally recognized as the founder of Motherhood Studies and its subfield Maternal Theory, and creator of Matricentric Feminism, a feminism for and about mothers, and Matricritics, a literary theory and practice for a reading of mother-focused texts (2021). She is founder/editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative and publisher of Demeter Press, as well as co-editor/editor of thirty-plus books on many motherhood topics She has a PhD in Creative Writing and an MA in Women’ s Studies. Her writing has been included in a wide variety of publications including other Demeter Press anthologies. She is co-editor, along with Andrea O’ Reilly and Fiona Joy Green, of Coming Into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism (Demeter Press). She is a feminist mother of three, and she lives in Alberta where she writes and sometimes teaches writing-related classes too. She is the sole author of Practicing Feminist Mothering (ARP), co-editor of ten Demeter Press collections addressing ever-changing feminist maternal praxis and pedagogies, and author of many encyclopedia entries, peer-reviewed articles and chapters discussing feminist mothering, matricentric feminism, matroreform, motherlines, female genital cutting, gender fluidity, mommy blogging, and family engagement with privacy and boundary setting related to media and technologies.
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