Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines

Description

Inspired by the legacy of radical and queer black feminists of the 1970s and '80s, Revolutionary Mothering is an anthology that centres mothers of colour and other marginalised mothers' voices. Marginalised and oppressed mothers are at the centre of a world of necessary transformation. The challenges we face as movements working for racial, economic, reproductive, gender and food justice, as well as anti-violence, anti-imperialist and queer liberation are the same challenges that marginalised mothers face every day.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs was named one of UTNE Reader's 50 Visionaries Transforming the World in 2009, a Reproductive Reality Check Shero, a Black Woman Rising nominee in 2010, and was awarded one of the first-ever Too Sexy for 501c3 trophies in 2011. She is a cocreator of the MobileHomecoming experiential archive and documentary project, which has been featured in Curve Magazine, the Huffington Post, in Durham Magazine, and on NPR. She lives in Durham, North Carolina. China Martens is the author of The Future Generation: The Zine-book for Subculture Parents, Kids, Friends and Others, and coeditor of Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities. She was a cofounder of Kidz City, a radical child care collective in Baltimore (2009-2013). She lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Mai'a Williams is the creator and director of Water Studio which supports and cocreates with underground community artists and revolutionaries in Cairo, Egypt. Her essays, short stories, and poetry have appeared in publications such as make/shift, Mamaphiles, Popshot, and Woman's Work. She is the instigator of the Outlaw Midwives movement, zines, and blog, and is the author of the anthology Revolutionary Motherhood, which became the inspiration for Revolutionary Mothering.

"This collection is a treat for anyone that sees class and that needs to learn more about the experiences of women of color (and who doesn't?!). There is no dogma here, just fresh ideas and women of color taking on capitalism, anti-racist, anti-sexist theory-building that is rooted in the most primal of human connections, the making of two people from the body of one: mothering." --Barbara Jensen, author of Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America "For women of color, mothering--the art of mothering--has been framed by the most virulent systems, historically: enslavement, colonialism, capitalism, imperialism. We have had few opportunities to define mothering not only as an aspect of individual lives and choices, but as the processes of love and as a way of structuring community. Revolutionary Mothering arrives as a needed balm." --Alexis De Veaux, author of Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde "Although it is primarily written for mothers of all ages, the issues that are raised--about family, love, struggle, sacrifice, and acceptance--are universal as they speak to the revolutionary that exists within all of us." --Karsonya Wise Whitehead, PhD, assistant professor of communication and African and African American studies, Loyola University Maryland "Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines is juicy, gutsy, vulnerable, and very brave. These women insist on having their children in a society that does not welcome them, in a world that is rapidly falling apart. Their dream for their children, based on their love of them, encompasses the sorrow and the joy that mothers everywhere, whether human, animal, or plant, feel at this time. A radical vision, many radical visions of how to mother in a time of resistance and of pain." --Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and activist "This is the book for readers who know mothering is not just about a baby and a mother or parents in an isolated suburban nursery, but that mothering happens in a context of generations, a context of racial history, and in a spiritual context; that it takes place from the shore line to the front line, in times of scarcity and abundance; that it is queer and love-filled. Here, revolution, love, and mothering are an inseparable unity." --Faith Holsaert, coeditor of Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts of Women in SNCC