| 1. |
- Björklund, Jenny, 1974-
(författare)
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Struggling to Become a Mother : Literary Representations of Involuntary Childlessness
- 2023
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Ingår i: Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783031172106 - 9783031172113 ; , s. 55-75
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter focuses on literary representations of childlessness, more particularly, Swedish novels from the twenty-first century, with female protagonists and where the struggle to have children takes center stage: Pernilla Glaser’s 40 minus (2010; 40 Below), Martina Haag’s Glada hälsningar från Missångerträsk: En vintersaga (2011; Happy Greetings from Missångerträsk: A Winter’s Tale), and Tove Folkesson’s Hennes ord: Värk I–III (2019; Her Words: Ache I–III). I analyze the literary representations of involuntary childlessness and the women at the center of the narratives, focusing in particular on how non-motherhood is positioned in relation to femininity and (hetero)normativity. I also situate these representations in their national context and analyze how they relate to Swedish-branded values like gender equality and progressive family politics. On the one hand, the representations of non-motherhood illustrate the centrality of motherhood to normative femininity, and all three novels reinforce heteronormative temporalities. On the other hand, the novels to some extent also resist these norms. Moreover, none of these novels ends with children or even a pregnancy, and thus the narratives break with the conventional infertility plot line and frame the struggle to become a mother as a story that can be told in its own right.
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| 2. |
- Fahlgren, Margaretha, 1952-, et al.
(författare)
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Contested Motherhood in Autobiographical Writing : Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti
- 2023
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Ingår i: Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783031172137 - 9783031172106 - 9783031172113 ; , s. 135-151
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter examines contemporary autobiographical narratives which explore the notion of motherhood as the central issue in women’s lives. These narratives have been important in offering alternative discourses and thereby broadening the concept of motherhood. This chapter discusses them in the light of motherhood studies and theories about matrilineal narratives in contemporary literature. Works by two highly acclaimed Canadian writers are at the center of our study: Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother (first published in 2001; 2008) and Sheila Heti’s Motherhood (2018). Both volumes convey an ambivalence toward motherhood and lean on emotions as well as intellectual argument. Theoretically, the point of departure is Toril Moi’s discussion about contemporary life writing as an “exercise of attention,” and furthermore the feminist examination of the definition of motherhood and mothering in a social context, from Adrienne Rich (1976) to Tina Miller (2005). The texts discussed in this chapter contest different “cultural scripts” (Miller)—discourses that affect societal and subjective views on motherhood and gender.
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| 3. |
- Grahn, Lisa, 1989-
(författare)
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One Hand Clapping : The Loneliness of Motherhood in Lucia Berlin's "Tiger Bites"
- 2023
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Ingår i: Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783031172106 - 9783031172113 - 9783031172137 ; , s. 17-31
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The issue of safe and legal abortions is and has been highly relevant for generations of women. By describing acts that have previously been carried out in secret, literary fiction makes these experiences visible, meanwhile exposing the circular nature of women’s history. In this chapter, intergenerational experiences of motherhood are examined in Lucia Berlin’s short story “Tiger Bites,” which tells the story of a young mother seeking abortion in Mexico. In Berlin’s representation of the abortion clinic, feelings of isolation and shame are foregrounded, as well as the actual risks to the health of the women and girls involved. The portrayal of the patients and staff at the clinic highlights aspects such as class, the crossings of bodily and national borders, and agency. This chapter argues that family relationships can create feelings of isolation as well as community, and that it is only through her own choice that the protagonist can realize her agency in motherhood. The analysis ultimately argues that Berlin’s story has its own intergenerational relevance, and speaks to the present as well as to its time of initial publication.
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| 4. |
- Kella, Elizabeth, 1958-
(författare)
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From Survivor to Im/migrant Motherhood and Beyond: Margit Silberstein’s Postmemorial Autobiography, Förintelsens Barn
- 2023
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Ingår i: Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783031172106 - 9783031172137 - 9783031172113 ; , s. 93-114
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Swedish journalist and author Margit Silberstein’s autobiographical memoir, Förintelsens Barn (2021), represents her post-war upbringing in a survivor family. Both parents were Hungarian-speaking Jews from Transylvania, who were the only members of their respective families to survive horrendous persecution and conditions during the war. After the war they immigrated to a small town in Sweden, where Margit and her brother were born. This chapter examines the tensions in Silberstein’s account of her childhood and her relations with her parents, particularly her mother, viewing these tensions as stemming from characteristics of and contradictions between later postmemorial writing and the im/migrant literature of Sweden today, both of which are conditioned by their social contexts, including those of antisemitism. Silberstein’s work brings Holocaust postmemoir into dialogue with im/migrant autobiography in contemporary Sweden, and it suggests that this dialogue will continue to the third generation, Silberstein’s children.
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| 5. |
- Wahlström Henriksson, Helena, 1966-, et al.
(författare)
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Ambivalent Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering : From Normal and Natural to Not-at-all
- 2023
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Ingår i: Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783031172106 - 9783031172137 - 9783031172113 ; , s. 1-15
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This chapter introduces the volume by outlining some crucial scholarly histories: the feminist study of motherhood and mothering, and the literary study of mothers in fiction and life writing, across many differences. Since mothers, motherhood, and mothering not only are defined by physical and material experiences but also take shape in narratives—in stories and recorded accounts—these also need to be continuously studied and theorized if we are to understand the culturally specific meanings of motherhood. The chapter then introduces each of the separate studies in the volume. These variously demonstrate that literary representations of mothers and mothering foreground the ways that parenthood and parenting for women are imbricated with dimensions like class, race, age, and nationality, as well as how motherhood is connected to living a heterosexual, lesbian, queer, or trans everyday life. In original analyses of a range of representations, from absent/missing mothers to highly present ones, the studies that comprise this book engage in a dialogue with the previous research, raising questions about how motherhood and mothering are marked by absence and/or presence and by profound ambivalences, about how maternal perspectives and voices gain space or mix with filial voices in the narratives, and about how mothers are constructed in relation to ideals and norms of motherhood.
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