Table Of Content

Matricentric Feminism Copyright © 2016 Demeter Press Individual copyright to their work is retained by the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Funded by the Government of Canada Financé par la gouvernement du Canada Demeter Press 140 Holland Street West P. O. Box 13022 Bradford, on L3Z 2Y5 Tel: (905) 775-9089 Email: [email protected] Website: www.demeterpress.org Demeter Press logo based on the sculpture “Demeter” by Maria-Luise Bodirsky <www.keramik-atelier.bodirsky.de> Front cover artwork: Lisa Brouckxon, “Andrea as Demeter,” 2015, mixed media collage, 24 by 30 inches. eBook: tikaebooks.com Printed and Bound in Canada Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication O’Reilly, Andrea, 1961-, author Matricentric feminism : theory, activism, and practice / Andrea O’Reilly. Includes bibliographical references. isbn 978-1-77258-083-9 (paperback) 1. Feminist theory. 2. Feminism. 3. Mothers. 4. Motherhood. I. Title. HQ1190.O74 2016 305.4201 C2016-906000-4 Matricentric Feminism Theory, Activism, and Practice ANDREA O’REILLY demeter press For Terry Conlin, My most avid supporter, my toughest critic, my closest friend, and my partner in life. table of contents Acknowledgements ix Foreword: Matricentric Feminism Is a Gift to the World Petra Bueskens xi Introduction 1 Chapter One Matricentric Feminism as Scholarship: Maternal Theory 9 Chapter Two Matricentric Feminism as Activism: The Twenty-First-Century Motherhood Movement 102 Chapter Three Matricentric Feminism as Practice: Feminist Mothering 133 table of contents Chapter Four Matricentric Feminism and Its Relationship to Academic Feminism 185 Works Cited 226 Appendices 243 viii acknowledgements I opened the acknowledgements to my book Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart (2004) citing a quotation from Morrison’s Song of Solomon. The narrator, commenting upon the importance of othermothering, says this about Hagar Dead: “She needed what most colored girls needed: a chorus of mamas, grandmamas, aunts, cousins, sisters, neighbors, Sunday school teachers, best girlfriends, and what all to give her the strength life demanded of her-and the humor with which to live it” (311). I believe that scholars, likewise, need a “chorus of mamas” to think and write well. Fortunately, I have been blessed with a symphony in my life. Over the past twenty-five years as I have thought and wrote about mothers, mothering, and feminism, my chorus of mamas bestowed upon me the strength a scholarly life demands and the humour with which to live it. I am deeply grateful to the late Sara Ruddick for giving us a vision of empowered mothering in her book Maternal Thinking, and for championing me as I struggled to create my own. Thank you to the members of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (mirci), in particular Petra Beuskens, Rebecca Brom- wich, Deborah Byrd, Regina Edmonds, Linda Ennis, May Friedman, Jenny Jones, Linda Hunter, Laure Kruk, Memee Lavell-Harvard, Caroline McDonald-Harker, Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, Liz Podnieks, and Marie Porter. My thinking on mothering was enhanced and sustained by this wonderful community of scholars. Thank you as well to my graduate students whose scholarship has enriched ix