Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Krasny, Karen

English

Reconstructing Romania: An Autobiographical Account of Foreign Adoption--A Reader's Theatre in Five Voices

Klassen, Chris

Chris Klassen 
The Infertile Goddess 
A Challenge to Maternal 
Imagery in Feminist Witchcraft 
Thispaper explores the image y ofMootheer Goddess andthe resultant romanticisation 
of mothering found in feminist Witchcraft. I approach the topicpom a personal 
perspective as a feminist Witch dealing with infertility. I argue that while Mother 
Goddess imagery is not, in and of itse5 bad, rather it is limited t o  one type offemale 
experience. Iffeminist Witchcraft is to be relevant to a large range ofwomen andtheir 
variedexperiences, multiple Goddess images must be developedand utilized, includ- 
ing the infertile Goddess. 
Let me begin by telling a story: There once was a young Mennonite girl who 
dreamed of having 12 children. She spent hours during church services 
thinking up baby names rather than listen to the preacher. These names often 
included conventional names with odd spellings. Like Mychaelwith a y .  What 
can I say? I t  was the '80s. When she got a bit older this still young Mennonite 
girl decided 12 kids was a bit much, giving birth might be a bit painful, and there 
were millions of parentless children in the world; she was going to adopt- 
maybe only four. She grew a bit older, got married, left the church, became a 
Witch-you know, typical things to transition from young Mennonite girl- 
hood to young Mennonite womanhood. Or, maybe not so typical. 
It does seem a bit of a jump from being Mennonite-of the relatively 
fundamentalist variety-to being a Witch. Why Witchcraft, you ask? Well, 
conservative as her Mennonite community was, this young woman was always 
concerned with women's roles in the church and feminist theology. Long 
before she lefi the church she refused male language and imagery for God, 
though wondered what to call God, if God wasn't male, since 'God' seemed to 
be a masculine term. In Witchcraft, that is feminist Witchcrafl, she discovered 
Goddess. (And she discovered Witchcraft by reading an essay by Starhawkwho 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 45 
sounded so Mennonite in her peace theology. When she found out Starhawk 
was a Witch this young Mennonite woman needed to rethink some of her 
assumptions.) What was so appealing in the imagery of Goddess was the 
potential for multiplicity. If the Goddess is in all women (and possibly men 
though feminist Witches can't seem to agree on that) and all women represent 
Goddess, then clearly there must be many, many images of Goddess-perhaps 
even many, many Goddesses. How exciting. How seemingly revolutionary. 
Feminist Witches have constructed religious imagery and ritual in oppo- 
sition to mainstream patriarchal religion, particularly Christianity. As such 
they have spent some effort in rethinking deity and how imagery and lan- 
guage about deity affects human self-understanding. A significant aspect of 
this rethinking is the speculative construction of Goddess imagery. I t  is 
important to note that when feminist Witches talk about Goddess(es) they 
are aware of the constructed nature of their reliance on this imagery. For 
Starhawk, the Goddess is a "symbol for That-Which-Cannot-Be-Told 
(Starhawk, 1999: 32) and "a name for power-from-within" (Starhawk, 1997: 
4). For Barbara Walker, the Goddess is a "symbol of [women's] self-empow- 
erment" (1990: 4) and a "spiritual construct" (2000: 28). Sheila Ruth (1994), 
in her feminist Pagan philosophical treatise, Take Back the Light, calls the 
Goddess a metaphor and warns that "People tend to fall in love with their 
symbols, to reify them, and thus to idolize them. Frequently they forget or 
choose not to acknowledge the fictive nature of the symbols they themselves 
have created"(77). The admittedly constructed nature of Goddess imagery is 
significant. Feminist Witches are opposing patriarchal religion through their 
speculations. But what are they opposing and how creative are their specula- 
tions? Is a Goddess, particularly a Mother Goddess in direct opposition to a 
Father God, the most useful speculation in creating a feminist religion? I have 
come to believe that the reliance on Mother Goddess imagery, and the related 
romanticism of the female reproductive process, whiie speculating a new kind 
of deity, does not do much to speculate a new kind of religion or a new way 
to conceive of femaleness. 
The defining of femaleness by reproduction, which often happens in the 
production of Mother Goddess imagery, is not unusual in the larger corpus of 
literature on Goddess religion. The prehistoric Goddess is seen by most 
feminist Witches as primarily a Mother Goddess largely due to the way 
archaeological artifacts are interpreted. Though archaeologist Marija Gimbutas 
does not insist that every Goddess figure is a Mother Goddess, the majority are 
given some association with fertility. "As a supreme Creator who creates from 
her own substance," says Marija Gimbutas (1982), the Great Goddess of life, 
death and regeneration "is the primary goddess of the Old European pantheon. 
In this she contrasts with the Indo-European Earth-Mother, who is the 
impalpable sacred earth-spirit and is not in herself a creative principle; only 
through the interaction of the male sky-god does she become pregnant" (196). 
This opposition of the "true" parthenogenetic Mother Goddess versus the 
46 ( Volume 7, Number l 
The I n f d l e  Goddess 
male-reliant non-creative Mother Goddess is important for feminist Witches 
who prefer a separatist existence. If the Goddess does not needa God, neither 
do they need men. I t  is ironic, however, that in the same book that Gimbutas 
points out the parthenogenetic nature of the Great Goddess and highlights the 
fertility imagery found in Old Europe she also maintains the egalitarian nature 
ofo ld  European mythology. She insists, though, that even ifthe Godwas given 
power in Old European society, creative power was the domain of the Goddess, 
and creative power means fertility. 
The association of the Goddess and women with fertility is highly 
problematic for many feminist thinkers beyond myself. ArchaeologistsMargaret 
Conkey and Ruth Tringham are "quite sceptical about endorsing these 'posi- 
tive' values [of fertility], since they are clearly entangled with many current 
debates about the state of 'family values' in contemporary North America. 
These debates, in turn, are obviously situatedwithin the political manoeuvrings 
of conservative and right-wing politics that are very much at odds with many 
of the goals of feminist politics" (233-234, note 13). Emily Culpepper (1987) 
suggests that the importance of fertility in feminist Goddess religions is 
wrapped up in the importance of creativity. She writes in her essay, "Contem- 
porary Goddess Theology: A Sympathetic Critique," that, T h e  Goddess is 
seen as giving birth to the universe. Birth becomes here the paradigm of 
creativity. Goddess as 'Mother of the Cosmos' thus carries an ontologically 
prior weight, and acquires a generic function. T h e  Mother' is therefore a sort 
offirst name, a name that uniquely stands for the whole of the Triple Goddess" 
(56). Thus, though feminist Witches call the Goddess, Maiden, Mother and 
Crone, the Mother is primary. Instead of seeing motherhood in its association 
with fertility as one example of creativity, it is taken as the prime model of 
creativity. 
The high value given to creativity (imaged as fertility) entrenches the 
image of the Mother Goddess in feminist Witchcraft over any other Goddess 
image. What often ends up happening, however, is a reinforcement of the 
idealization of the nurturing mother. Adrienne Rich, in Of Woman Born 
(1976), has shown howpatriarchalsystems have already sacralizedmotherhood 
whiie creating an archetype which reduces real women to failures. This 
archetype constructs, 
the Mother, source of angelic love and forgiveness in a world increas- 
ingly ruthless and impersonal; the feminine, leavening, emotional 
element in a society ruled by male logic and male claims to 'objective,' 
'rational' judgment; the symbol and residue of moral values and 
tenderness in a world of war, brutal competition, and contempt for 
human weakness. (52) 
The image of this patriarchal archetypal Mother is not that different from 
the idealized Mother Goddess promoted by some feminist Witches. 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 47 
Cynthia Eller (2000), in her recent critique of pre-historic matriarchy 
theory, complains of the maintenance of the Eternal Feminine in feminist 
Goddess worship. She writes, 
Women are defined quite narrowly as those who give birth and 
nurture, who identify themselves in terms of their relationships, and 
who are closely allied with the body, nature and sex-usually for 
unavoidable reasons oftheir biological makeup. This image ofwoman 
is drastically revalued in feminist matriarchal myth, such that it is not 
a mark of shame or subordination, but of pride and power. But this 
image is nevertheless quite conventional and, at least up until now, it 
has done an excellent job of serving patriarchal interests. (6-7). 
Because of this reliance on archetypal feminine imagery, says Eller, 
women, by trying to live up to the Goddess, begin to lose their humanity. 
"Feminist matriarchalists gaze in at themselves," says Eller, "in the wonder of 
self-discovery, but what looks back at them is not their individual self, but the 
eternal feminine" (2000: 67). 
In The Myth ofMatriarchal Prehistory, Eller expresses her frustration that 
for many feminists who appeal to the Goddess, particularly a prehistoric, 
matriarchal Goddess, "Sexism is certainly said to be a historical construct, but 
femininity-however it is understood-is usually taken to be timeless" (2000: 
63). Because ofthis timelessness offemininitywomen are denied individuality- 
they can only become a reflection of the archetypal Eternal Feminine which is 
a static identity. I t  is odd, remarks Eller, 
that the same people who are most devoted to the "naturalness" of 
A - 
sex differences-from fundamentalist Christians to feminist 
matriarchalists-also seem to be afraid that these "natural" sex differ- 
ences will disappear if we don't constantly reinforce them, some- 
times by outright coercion. What nightmare do they imagine awaits 
us if we stop obsessively labeling characteristics as feminine and 
masculine? Will we fail to recognize who we need to have sex with 
to make babies and the entire race will come to an end? (I say this 
with tongue in cheek, but I also believe that our addiction to labeling 
- - 
everything as masculine or feminine is part and parcel of our 
heterosexism.) (74) 
Emily Culpepper (1987), too, sees the use of archetypal theory in feminist 
constructions of the Goddess as uncomfortably familiar. The Goddess, as an 
archetype of the Feminine creates what Culpepper calls "generic erasure." She 
laments, 
It is easy for the Goddess as generic to become not just a catalyst for 
48 1 Volume 7, Number l 
The Infertile Goddess 
insight but also a veil that covers up, erases or insufficiently differen- 
tiates important issues. When this happens, Goddess thealogy can 
have a flattening-out or dulling influence, giving us too pallid a picture 
of the richness of multiple female realities. This insight explained to 
me why I often found that poetry, art and ritual that focused on this 
generic goddess was boring! The archetype was receiving more atten- 
tion than real women were. (61-62) 
That Goddess-centred societies of the past are seen as also matriarchal, or 
woman-centred, reinforces the notion that there is something naturally "good" 
(as opposed to the natural "evil" of male-centred societies) about femaleness. 
~su isanna  Budapest (1989), when talking about the various Goddess imagery 
ofDianic Witchcraft, claims 'We believe that Aradia, Goddess incarnate, is all 
women who come to a female-identified consciousness, to a social conscious- 
ness of the oppression of everything female, and who dare to fight for their own 
rights and the rights oftheir children" (160). Because the Goddess is essentially 
female, femaleness is romanticised as naturally and purely good. Because the 
Goddess is internal to all women as well as external, human women are the 
Goddess. This further reinforces the notions of purity and goodness as natural 
to femaleness. The association of "women" as a "good" group denies any 
differences between women. This, of course, is problematic in so many ways. 
As Laura Donaldson (1992) points out, "one effect of forging feminism from 
such univocal terms as 'sexual difference' and 'sisterhood' [with the implied 
goodness of all women in these categories] is the reduction of the Other to the 
same-an impulse at the heart of the colonidist project" (11). Furthermore, as 
Jane Flax (1990) points out in ThinkingFragments, the grouping of all women 
together as 'good' denies any recognition of the power some women hold over 
others, "e.g., the differential privileges of race, class, sexual preference, age, and 
location in the world system" (182). 
Let's get back to our story: Skip ahead a few more years. The still youngish 
Mennonite woman has now lived almost 30 years in a society which judges 
women's worth by their fertility. She still thinks adoption is a good idea but 
figures she should try the whole "natural childbirth" thing first. After all, its 
now okay to be a feminist mother, isn't it? And giving birth is supposedly this 
wonderful spiritual experience, isn't it? And, frankly, she's curious to see what 
a child born bf her and her ~ a ~ a n e s e  ~ e n n o n i t e  would looklike. So, toss 
out the birth control, increase the sex, limit the alcohol and kittylitter changing 
and presto-she's hit with the most pain she's every encountered. Ovarian 
cysts, she's told. We'll have to operate, she's told. One ofyour ovaries will need 
to be removed, she's told, but the other one should be good. God gives us two 
for a reason . . . she's told. The " E  word is not mentioned. 
The day of surgery arrives-a month earlier than planned because the pain 
got too bad and morphine no longer worked to keep it bearable. Two "cysts" 
are removed. The one from the left side is seven cm in diameter. The one on 
Journal $the Association for Research on Mothering ( 49 
Cbris Klassen 
the right side is 20 cm in diameter. Along with the removal of the cysts was a 
removal of one and a halfovaries and both fallopian tubes.Now comes the "E" 
word. "You have endometriosis," the youngish Mennonite Witch is told. 
Endometriosis is a cronic disease in which endometrial tissue (tissue which 
builds up in a woman's uterus to be sluffed off during menstruation) builds up 
in odd and inconvenient places forming masses of tissue which may or may not 
cause horrible pain. About five percent of women in North America have 
endometriosis. 
Okay, so here I am, and 1'11 now switch to first person to be clear to those 
who may not haveguessed the identityofmyprotagonist, ayoungishMennonite 
woman and a Witch, infertile and angry. I am angry because I truly believed in 
the right ofwomen to choose their reproductive options. I am angrybecause my 
choicewas taken away. I am angrybecause my choice was taken awaybymy own 
body, not by "the Patriarchy." And I'm angry because, even though I know 
better, my infertility makes me feel like a failed woman. Everywhere I look I see 
pregnant woman and women with young children. And then there's the 
Goddess-the Mother Goddess. As I am struggling with my feelings of 
inadequacy as a female and anger at myself for feeling inadequate as a female, 
I see the Mother Goddess as another symbol showing me how I have failed, not 
met up to the norms of femalehood. I once became a Witch so I could relate 
to deitywithin myself. But in a tradition which highlights the Mother Goddess 
I felt I no longer existed. Its one thing to be a potential birth giver and choose 
not to give birth. It's an entirely different thing to not have the potential, or the 
choice, at all. 
My challenge to feminist Witches, and others who find Goddess imagery 
empowering and useful, is to diversify the imagery. When Mother Goddess 
imagery becomes primary, as I see that it has, women who are infertile are 
alienated and constantly reminded of their insufficiency as females. Giving 
birth is not the epitome of creativity. It is one form, and an important one, I'm 
not denying that. But I want to see an infertile creative Goddess given as much 
attention as a fertile one. I want to see myselfin Goddess imagery in more than 
just my own personal rantings. I want to see a recognition that femaleness is not 
a synonym for birth giving. And please don't give me the crap about mothering 
being metaphoric for all sorts of nurturing and creating. When mothering is 
equated to birth giving to the extent that it is in feminist Witchcraft, a side 
comment allowing women not to be biological mothers doesn't carry much 
convincing weight. Let's make creativity itself the model of the Goddess and 
spiritual growth and formulate mothering as one example amongst many. Let's 
proliferate Goddess images so that "the Mother" is not absent, but not 
predominant either. Feminist lVitchcraft is about creating religious expres- 
sions to fit women's experiences. It has not adequately addressed women's 
experiences of infertility. My challenge to feminist Witches and Goddess 
worshippers in general is to make this a priority. The infertile Goddess is 
desperately needed. 
50 ( Volume 7, Number l 
The Infertile Goddess 
References 
Budapest, Zsuzsanna. 1989 [1980]. The Holy Book o f  Women's Mysteries. 
Oakland: Wingbow Press. 
Conkey, Margaret W., and Ruth E. Tringham. 1995. "Archaeology and the 
Goddess: Exploring the Contours of Feminist Archaeology." in D. C.  
Stanton and A. J. Stewart, eds. Feminisms in the Academy. Ann Arbor: 
University of Michigan Press. 199-247. 
Culpepper, Emily. 1987. "Contemporary Goddess Thealogy: A Sympathetic 
Critique." in C. W .  Atkinson, C. H .  Buchanan and M.  R. Miles, eds. 
Shaping New Vision: Gender and Values in American Culture. Ann Arbor: 
UMI Research. 51-71. 
Donaldson, Laura E. 1992. Decolonizing Feminisms: Race, Gender andEmpire- 
Building. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press. 
Eller, Cynthia. 2000. The Myth ofMatriarchalPrehisto ry: Why an Invented Past 
Won't Give Women a Future. Boston: Beacon Press. 
Flax, Jane. 1990. Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and 
Postmodernism in the Contemporary West. Berkeley: University of Califor- 
nia Press. 
Girnbutas, Marija. 1982. Goddessesand Gods of OldEurope. Berkeley: University 
of California Press. 
Rich, Adrienne. 1976. Of Woman Born: Motherhoodas Experience andlnstitu- 
tion. New York: W.W. Norton &Company. 
Ruth, Sheila. 1994. Take Back the Light:A Feminist Reclamation of Spirituality 
and Religion. Lanham, Maryland: Rowrnan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 
Starhawk. 1997 [1982]. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics. Boston: 
Beacon Press. 
Starhawk. 1999 [1979]. The SpiralDance:A Rebirth oftheAncient Religion oftbe 
Great Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row. 
Walker, Barbara G. 1990. Women's Rituals: A Sourcebook. San Francisco: 
Harper & Row. 
Walker, Barbara G. 2000. Restoringthe Goddess: EqualRites forModern Women. 
Amherst: Prometheus Books. 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 51 


The Infertile Goddess: A Challenge to Maternal Imagery in Feminist Witchcraft

Duncan, Carol B.

Carol B. Duncan 
Hard Labour 
Religion, Sexuality and 
the Pregnant Body in the 
African Diaspora 
With spec@ reference to selected works ofauthors, Nalo Hopkinson (1 998), Octavia 
E. Butler (1993) andjilmmaker, Julie Dash (1 991), this paper discusses images of 
pregnancy in African diasporic S/F (speculative fact andjiction) narratives in film 
and literature. Contraveningpopular stereotypes of black female pregnant bodies as 
overly fecund, wild and animalistic, pregnancy and pregnant, black women as 
portrayed by these Hopkinson, Butler and Dash instead symbolize transformative 
hope in their families and communities. 
"She nah have no ambition. She nah have no ambition at all, at aU, at all." This 
phrase is a short form in the anglo-Caribbean communities with which I am 
familiar for speaking of a particular type of shame. "She nah have no ambition. 
Insteada' study school, she-a study man." For on the one hand, the roundedness 
ofthe school girl's belly is a visible, tangible sign ofher sexual and moral agency, 
transgression andlor victimization. On the other hand, however, children, 
and motherhood, in particular, are traditionally highly valued within 
African and African-Caribbean societies and are the occasions for religious- 
based individual and familial celebrations. In societies where time is cyclical and 
circular and ancestorship ofone form or the other has influenced communitarian 
values, interpretations of Christianity and the development of New World 
African religions such as santeria and vodun, children are seen as the link 
between the present generation, the ancestors and the future. As NanaPeazant, 
the elder in Julie Dash's (1991) film, Daughters o f  the Dust, noted to a 
disillusioned great-grandson: "The ancestor and the womb, they one." There- 
fore, the juxtaposition of the devalued pregnant black female body as a sign of 
"shame" and sexual transgression rooted in experiences of sexual exploitation 
or wilW choices that contravene community norms against the high value of 
Journal afthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 16 7 
Carol B. Duncan 
parenthood is a highly contested terrain. 
In this paper, I will explore this contradictory positioning ofblackwomen 
in relation to pregnancy as represented by writers, Octavia E. Butler and Nalo 
Hopkinson and film-maker Julie Dash. I have focused on these artists in their 
works which contain key characters who are young, pregnant black women 
because the narratives redeem the experiences of pregnant, black women, 
especially those who are located in marginallzed social, economic and political 
contexts. The economic, political and psychic crises that the characters undergo 
and resolve are reflective of the larger family structure or community in which 
they reside. In their redemption and crisis resolution, the women speak 
ancestral wisdom and serve as channels, though reluctantly, for African-based 
deities. They are cast in the role of sage and founder of a religion in the case of 
Butler's Lauren Oya Olamina in Parable ofthe Sower (1993), healer and warrior 
in the instance of Ti-Jeanne, the reluctant adversary of a drug lord in a post- 
apocalyptic Toronto in Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), and 
redemptive mother, Eula-Yemaya, in Julie Dash's groundbreaking film, Daugh- 
ters oftAe Dust (1991). 
Stereotypes of black women and pregnancy 
Mothering and motherhood for black women in the Americas has been 
frought with contradictions. While continental African and African diasporic 
cultures are overwhelmingly child-centric and value parenthood, the legacy of 
chattel slavery created a social context in which pregnancy and child-rearing 
meant not only reproduction but also profit. Enslaved black women of child- 
bearing age thus occupied a unique role as propertywhich could reproduce itself 
thus adding to the economic value of the individual woman. As scholars such 
as cultural critic and activist Angela Davis in Women, Race and Class (1983) and 
historian Barbara Bush in her study of slave women in the Caribbean (1990) 
have noted, enslaved blackwomen were victimized in ways that were particular 
to their gender in slaveholding societies. The narratives of women such as 
Harriet Jacobs (who wrote under the pseudonym Linda Brent) (2001 [1861]) 
who was enslaved in the United States, and Mary Prince (1993) enslaved in the 
Caribbean and England in the nineteenth century, attest to black women's 
sexual exploitation. 
This exploitation and torture was so endemic that in a peculiar twist under 
an otherwise deeply patriarchal system, the status of children born in slave 
societies was determined not by the father but by the mother. In this way, 
children born to enslaved women whose fathers were free, in some cases, they 
were the owners of these women, would automatically inherit the enslaved 
status of the mother thus maintaining the status quo. 
Welfare queen," drawing unearned and unwisely spent money of "tax- 
payers," "unwed mother" and "crack ho" or other substance-addicted mother, 
- .  
are just a few of the latest North American-based incarnations of images of 
blackwomen as "unfit," "maladjusted" and otherwise dangerous, bad mothers. 
168 1 Volume 7, Number 1 
Hard Labour 
These contemporary stereotypes of bad, black mothers draw on older nine- 
teenth-century images of black motherhood and black women's sexuality, in 
particular, such as the Sapphire (an angry, scheming, conniving, bitchy wo- 
man) and Jezebel (sexual siren and tempter ofwhite men to their moral doom) 
which have their roots in American Old South racial iconography (Jewel, 
1993). 
These images stand in stark contrast to the asexual, subservient mammy 
whose maternal role is devoted sacrifice to the family who owns her. Usually 
desexed, mammy's enlarged breasts could be interpreted as symbols of wet- 
nursing prevalent during the antebellum U.S. south. These images represent 
pregnancy not as a valued maternal state but rather as a signifier of defilement, 
sexual promiscuity and individual and communal shame for the woman, her 
family and the black community at large. Continuing in this vein, the baby that 
is subsequently birthed is not a symbol of rebirth, continuity and the next 
generation but of the reproduction of a social problem. Thus, black children 
from this perspective are marked as social problem for which the societywill pay 
in monetary, psychic and other terms. 
Given the pervasiveness of this type of stereotyping, it is not surprising, 
then, that for many black girls growing up in North America and elsewhere in 
the African Diaspora, one of the most deeply entrenched messages concerning 
sexuality and the body is shame associated with pregnancy at an early age, 
especially compounded with the absence of a committed partner andlor 
marriage. Aside from the economic, social and emotional challenges that 
parenting a child at an early age present, overwhelmingly, the pregnancy itself 
becomes a symbol of individual shame for the girl, her family and the larger 
black community. 
No longer "ruint": the redemption of the black female 
pregnant body 
In their works, Butler (1993), Hopkinson (1998) and Dash (1991) 
proclaim a redemptive moment by saying: "hail the pregnant, suffering, female 
black body" for the perspective of the "least of these" (to use a phrase from Black 
Church talk) holds important lessons for the black community, at large, and 
potentially the wider society. This is especially the case in Dash's film when the 
character Eula, a young newly-wed and heavily pregnant woman who has been 
"forced" (that's the term used in the film) by a white man experiences rejection 
from her husband Eli and faces a life of being "ruint." As a "ruint" woman, she 
is socially and morally outcast and a perpetual victim blamed for her own 
victimization within the eyes not only of the larger white society but within her 
own family. In a pivotal scene Eula's husband Eli confronts his great- 
grandmother, Nana Peazant, who at over 100 years old in 1902 is a witness of 
the nineteenth century, slavery, its ending and the beginning of a new century 
of hope for her family. Nana tries to teach Eli that all children are sent by the 
ancestors and that the ancestors "wouldn't send no baby that wasn't your own." 
Journal oftbe Association for Research on Mothering / 169 
Carol B. Duncan 
All three artists work in speculative genres of fiction in literature and film. 
That is to say that through invention and a conscious incorporation of the 
speculative and fantastical-events and characters that decidedly outside of the 
normal and every day-they explore both historical and contemporary social 
realities ofblack people in the African Diaspora. T o  borrow Starhawk's (1988) 
term, they dare to "dream the dark" of contemporary and historical black 
realities in their narratives. That "dark" encompasses the existential predica- 
ment of enslaved people which is the quest for freedom and the full expression 
of humanity. The dark is the contradictory bind of being both human yet 
classified as property. The description of this predicament is one of the central 
themes of the New World African American literature that began with the 
slave narratives. The "dark" are also those places of sanctuary in black commu- 
nity life described by bell hooks in her essay, "Dreaming Ourselves Dark and 
Lovely" (1993) as reservoirs ofknowledge based on African-American folkways 
and folk knowledge. 
Butler (1993) and Hopkinson (1998) tap into those reservoirs through the 
subgenre of apocalyptic science fiction. The hallmark of this genre are stories 
in which contemporary North American societies are depicted as either being 
on the brink of, or shortly after events which have the potential for complete 
destruction and yet which hold the promise of renewal and rebirth. Theologian 
Emilie T o m e s  in her book, In a Blaze ofGIory (1995), describes this as the 
eschatological dimension of apocalypse that is radically hopeful and evident in 
black religious experiences of Christianity. 
Toronto-based writer, Nalo Hopkinson (1998), for instance, refers to her 
work as "fabulist fiction"-that is to say that her works utilize the characters, 
fables, and folklore of African-Caribbean culture refracted through the narra- 
tive conventions of apocalyptic science fiction. In Brown Girl in the Ring, 
Hopkinson tells the tale of Ti-Jeanne, a young woman, in her 20s living in a 
post-apocalyptic early twenty-first century Toronto. She is the mother of an 
unnamed infant baby boy and the reluctant heir to a spiritual legacy passed on 
from her grandmother, Gros-Jeanne. Weaving elements from Yoruban orisha, 
Haitian vodun and Jamaicanpocomania together, Hopkinson creates a Carib- 
bean diasporic religion uniquely responsive to the life situations of migratory 
Caribbean peoples in Toronto. Through the course of the novel, Ti-Jeanne 
discovers that she is a child of the powerful Haitian vodun Iwa, Baron Samedi, 
the lwa of the cemetery and lord of the gateway between life and death. She 
draws on his power and that of Yoruban orisha and her ancestors to confront 
evil represented by her own father a powerful drug dealer, Rudy. In a stroke of 
genius, the C N  tower becomes the centre pole through which these ancestral 
spirits and gods are channeled in the novel's final showdown. 
Octavia E. Butler's oeuvre explores African-American historical and 
contemporary experiences through the lens of speculative fiction. Evident in 
her short stories and novels such as Wildseed (1980) and Parable of the Sower 
(1993) is a preoccupation with genetics, family structure and reproduction. In 
170 1 Volume 7, Number I 
Hard Labour 
her three well-known series: the xenogenesis series, the parable novels and the 
patternist series, these themes are explored in ways which both explicitly and 
implicitly reference "race," reproduction, family structure and colonialism in 
the United States. In Wildseed, for example, we meet An~anwu, a shapeshifting 
woman whose real body is young and teenaged while she is three centuries old. 
The mother ofgenerations oftransplanted Africans in the Americas, Anyanwu 
serves as a witness to an African past, the Middle Passage voyage across the 
Atlantic from Africa to the Americas and the building of communities in the 
Americas. Together with Doro, a masculine spirit force who uses the bodies of 
human hosts, she is a nation mother, ancestor and goddess to her people. 
Lauren Oya Olamina is the 15 year old protagonist of Parable of the Sower. 
Her age echoes Harriet Jacobs' age of awakening to sexed and genderedrealities 
within the household of the family who owned her as a young girl. After fleeing 
her walled city in a post-apocalyptic early twenty-first century United States, 
she heads north seeking freedom. Echoing the historic treks of the Under- 
ground Railroad, Lauren's journey north is told through a first person narrative 
in her journal. She becomes the creator of a new religion, Earthseed, which in 
its "Everything Changes" echoes some of the tenets of contemporary earth- 
based religions. Lauren bears the name of the Yoruba orisha of change, Oya, 
a goddess associated with rainstorms, fast moving water and wind. She is the 
daughter of a drug-addicted woman whose drug use produced hyperempathy 
in Lauren. She is able to experience on a physical and emotional level the 
experiences of animals and humans simply by witnessing. In this way, Octavia 
E. Butler's story finds value in the parallel of our own time, crack-addicted 
babies. What is to become of these children as they grow up? Butler's story 
points to the "gifts" ofbabies born to drug-addicted mothers as potent mirrors. 
Julie Dash's acclaimed film, Daughters ofthe Dust (1991), is fabulist in the 
way that Hopkinson uses the term through its use of Gullah language, culture 
and religion in exploring themes of African-American women's identities, 
family histories and the making of the African Diaspora itself. The film shifts 
backwards and forwards in time from the antebellum slavery period through to 
story's current day, the year 1902. Narrated by Eula's unborn child, the film is 
both backward and forward-looking at the Peazant family's historyencompass- 
ing in the telling of that one family's story, the story of the creation of the 
African Diaspora. Eula is a young, pregnant black woman whose dilemma 
embodies the "ruin" of black women: Eula was "forcedn by a white man shortly 
after her marriage to Eli. The event and her refusing to tell the identity of her 
rapist to her husband threatens the stability of their marriage. Eula is pregnant 
and her husband is unsure of the paternity of the child. She refuses to disclose 
the identity ofher rapist for doingaso would mean that her husband would have 
a target at which to exact revenge resulting ultimately in his own retaliatory 
death. Eula shares the matriarch Nana Peazant's view that "the ancestors and 
the womb are one." Eli, however, is unsure. The Unborn Child of Eula's 
pregnancy serves as the film's narrator. She is the first ofthe last generation and 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 171 
Carol B. Duncan 
her special bond is her connection to her great-great-grandmother, the last of 
the first generation, the 100-year-old Nana Peazant. 
In a pivotal scene, Eula confronts her family about their refusal to accept 
a long-absent, visiting member, Yellow Mary because they deem her "ruint." 
She confronts the shame, fear and loathing that form the basis ofthe judgment 
of being a "ruint"woman, a woman whose sin and shame forever ban her from 
W community membership. In her countenance and style of address, Eula's 
lament serves as intercessory prayer and plea for not only herself and Yellow 
Mary but for all black women "mint" by poverty, sexism and racism. Her body 
doubles over with what appears to be an experience of spirit possession. The 
physical setting of the seaside and the issues with which she deals suggests that 
Yemaya, the ocean mother of the orisha religion, manifested in Eula and spoke 
to her family. 
Conclusion 
In the works of writers Nalo Hopkinson (1998) and Octavia E. Butler 
(1993) and film-maker, Julie Dash (1991), the dignity and humanity of black 
women as moral and sexual subjects is redeemed through placing the experi- 
ences ofthe "mint" represented by a young pregnant woman at the centre of the 
story. Like the works of writers Toni Morrison (1987) and Walker 
(1982), the works of these black women writers and filmmaker take up the 
confessional and testimonial aspect of slave narratives, the first texts in the 
African-American literary tradition. Like other speculative texts in the African 
Diasporic literary and cinematic traditions (cf. Charles Burnett's To Sleep With 
Anger [1990]), these texts take up the Middle Passage, the trans-Atlantic 
crossing from Africa to the Americas, as a cultural moment which continues to 
resonate in contemporary black women's life experiences. 
References 
Burnett, Charles (director and writer). 1990. To Sleep With Anger 
[videorecording]. 
Bush, Barbara. 1990. Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838. Kingston: 
Heinemann Caribbean. 
Butler, Octavia E. 1993. Parable ofthe Sower. New York: Four Walls Eight 
Windows. 
Butler, Octavia E. 1980. W'ildSeed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. 
Dash, Julie (producer, director and writer). 1991. Daughters ofthe Dust 
[videorecording]. America Playhouse Theatrical Films; a Geesha Girls 
Production. 
Davis, Angela Y. 1983. Women, Race and Class. New York: Vintage Books. 
Hopkinson, Nalo. 1998. Brown Girl in the Ring. New York: Warner Books. 
hooks, bell. 1993. Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery. Toronto: 
Between The Lines. 
172 1 Volume 7, Number I 
Hard Labour 
Jacobs, Harriet. 2001 [1861]. Incidents in the Life f a  Slave Girl. Mineola, NY: 
Dover Publications. 
Jewel, K. Sue. 1993. From Mummy t o  MissAmerica andBeyond: CulturalImages 
and the Shaping a f  US. Social Policy. London: Routledge. 
Morrison, Toni. 1987. Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 
Prince, Mary. 1993. The Histo y of Ma y Prince: A West Indian Slave. Ann 
Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 
Starhawk. 1988. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics. Boston: Beacon 
Press, 1988. 
Townes, Emilie. 1995. In a Blaze of Gloy: Womanist Spirituality as Social 
Witness. Nashville: Abingdon Press. 
Walker, Alice. 1982. The Color Purple. New York: Simon and Schuster. 
Journd oftbe Association for Research on Mothering / 1 73 


Hard Labour: Religion, Sexuality and the Pregnant Body in the African Diaspora

Norat, Gisela

Latina Grandmothers: Spiritual Bridges to Ancestral Lands

Dunlop, Rishma

Editor's Notes 
In this issue of Folio, I am pleased to introduce the work of Martha Vertreace- 
Doody, excerpts from her book length manuscript titled In this Glad Hour. I 
have included Vertreace-Doody's introductory essay as an eloquent preface to 
her poems. Her introduction provides us with insight into the research and 
creative process of the poet. Additionally, through the introduction, the reader 
is given significant insight into the historical context and inspiration for the 
creative workinspired by the poet's discovery of The Dia y ofMrs. Joseph Duncan 
(Elizabeth Caldwell Smith), whose life story is explored in the poems. Eliza- 
beth was born in 1808 in New York and her diary begins in her teenage years 
in Newark, New Jersey, ending in 1848. Her diary records the daily life of 
women and the shifts in her life as she moved from a girlhood of privilege and 
wealth to a life as a pioneer woman and wife of an Illinois congressman. 
Vertreace-Doody's beautiful, moving poems have a lyric sensibility that is 
counter-pointed by a skillful precision with language. The poems invite the 
reader on a fascinating journey with Elizabeth Caldwell Smith, the mother of 
ten children; the reader is introduced to a woman of a different time and place, 
a woman whose encounters with motherhood are vividly reconstructed and 
powerfully re-imagined through a twenty-first century poet's words. 
-Rishma Dunlop 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 177 


Editor's Notes

Patterson, Serena

"This is So You Know You Have Options": Lesbian Grandmothers and the Mixed Legacies of Nonconformity

Mogadime, Dolana

Book Review3 
Toni Morrison and Motherhood: 
A Politics of the Heart 
Andrea O'Reilly 
New York: State University of New York Press, 2004 
Reviewed by Dolana Mogadime 
Toni Morrison and Mofljerhood: A Politics offhe Heart begins with Andrea 
O'Reilly's description of her quest to understand the meaning of the ancient 
properties of black women and motherhood as a site of empowerment. As a 
white woman, academic, and mother, O'Reilly navigates the worlds of white 
feminists and black feminists in relation to mbtherhood and mothering. For 
the author, the Anglo-American feminist view of motherhood as a site of 
patriarchal oppression is problematic, and she goes to great lengths to chart 
the limitations embedded in western notions of motherhood. In fact, O'Reilly's 
book is built on counter narrative, and her critical position opens onto 
alternative and empowering African American conceptudizations of moth- 
ering. 
O'Reilly's intent "is to read Morrison as a maternal theorist" (xi) and she 
provides refreshing insight into the maternal theme as a central aspect of 
Morrison's fiction. Throughout her book, O'Reilly muses over Morrison's 
many interviews and articles in which she publicly articulates the views ofblack 
womanhood and motherhood that she embeds in her fiction. She engages 
Morrison's own voice and surmises: "In her reflections on motherhood, both 
inside and outside her fiction, Morrison articulates a fully developed theory of 
African American mothering that is central to her larger political and philo- 
sophical stance on black womanhood. Building upon black women's experi- 
ences of, and perspectives on, motherhood, Morrison develops a view of black 
motherhood that is, in terms of both maternal identity and role, radically 
different than the motherhood practiced and prescribed in the dominant 
culture" (1). 
In her navigation between two worlds, O'Reilly offers a creative under- 
standing of the work ofmothering theorists and the notion ofmaternal practice 
and explores connections between Anglo-American and black feminism. She 
analyzes intersections between Sara Ruddick's model of maternal practice and 
Patricia Hill Collins's standpoint theory of black mothering to consider ways 
in which Toni Morrison "defines mothenvork as a political enterprise that 
assumes as its central aim the empowerment of children" (1). 
O'Reilly artfully extends Ruddick's notion of maternal practice. While she 
foregrounds Ruddick's model of mothenvork as characterized by three de- 
mands - preservation, growth, and social acceptance - she reformulates and 
extends this model by suggesting that Morrison's desire to train children to 
184 1 Volume 7, Number 2 
Book Reviews 
become socially acceptable includes the African American custom of cultural 
bearing, "raising children in accordance with the values, beliefs, and customs of 
traditional African American culture and in particular the values of the funk 
and ancient proprieties. In each of these [maternal] tasks-preservation, 
nurturance, cultural bearing-Morrison is concerned with protecting children 
from the hurts of a racist and, for daughters, sexist culture, and with teaching 
children how to protect themselves so they may be empowered to survive and 
resist the racist and patriarchal culture in which they live and develop a strong 
and authentic identity as a black person" (29). 
Black feminists like myself, who study racial differences between blackand 
white communities and who argue for the political importance ofmothering in 
teaching, are drawn to O'Reilly's thesis that mothering is a potential site of 
empowerment. O'Reilly boldly reconfigures hegemonic western notions of 
motherhood while maintaining dialogues across cultural differences. She 
disrupts the dominant view of motherhood and values the ancient properties of 
blackwomanhood and mothering as a site for social and political emancipation. 
The urgency and relevance of this maternal theoretical approach is articulated 
best by O'Reilly: "Morrison in her rendition of mothering as a political and 
public enterprise, emerges as a social commentator and political theorist who 
radically, through her maternal philosophy, reworks, rethinks and reconfigures 
the concerns and strategies of African American, and in particular black 
women's emancipation in America" (xi). 
Women's Stories of Divorce at Childbirth: 
When the Baby Rocks the Cradle 
Hilary Hoge 
Binghamton: Haworth Clinical Practice Press, 2002 
Reviewed by Sandra Jarvie 
Hilary Hoge has written a comprehensive analysis of divorce at childbirth. Her 
book links clinical case studies, which record the lived experiences of women 
who divorce at childbirth, with a wide variety ofresearch to support her analysis 
of the impact of divorce on couples, both as individuals and as parents. Hoge 
explores the emotional and psychological adjustments to pregnancy and birth 
that contribute to divorce and the ensuing consequences, both short- and long- 
term, for parents and children. In  a concise manner, Hoge bridges research and 
theory with interpretation and insight. 
Hoge divides her book into three parts. Part one explores the causes of 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 185 


Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart

Bickel, Barbara

Fisher, Vanessa D.

Awakening the Divine Feminine: A Stepmother-Daughter Collaborative Journey Through Art-Making and Ritual

Kohlman, Marla H.

Book Review5 
and the impact of unrealistic western ideals about "good mothers" on mothers 
and children alike. Taken together, the essays investigate a number of reasons 
why women live apart from their biological children, including health prob- 
lems, the intervention of social agencies, missionary zeal, women's competing 
needs, and difficult life circumstances. Most of the mothers studied are 
contemporarywomen, but two fascinating essays (one on seventeenth-century 
Quaker mothers and another on early twentieth-century Canadian mothers), 
consider two very different contexts in which women live apart from their 
chidren. 
The essays point to the burden placed on both women and their children 
by the expectation that mothers and fathers will have different kinds of 
relationships with their children, and that a child's closest relationship will 
always be with his or her mother. As a result, children who are raised by other 
adults, but who have ongoing contact with their nonresidential mothers, feel 
stigmatized. Even when their mothers have made careful arrangements for 
their care and continue to be in contact with them, a gap exists between their 
experiences and ideals for relationships between mothers and chidren. At the 
same time, mothers often face harsh social sanctions and disapproval from 
acquaintances, as well as horn those closest to them. 
Many of the essays contest the sharp distinction between "good" and "bad 
mothers, which typically operates in the societies studied in this book (Aus- 
tralia, Britain, Canada, and the United States). They gesture toward a balanced 
rethinking ofwhat it means to be a "good mother." Further theorizing about 
non-residential mothering is necessary, and any such work would do well to 
startwith the rich theoretical and experiential material presented in Gustafson's 
collection. 
In Search of Shelter: Subjectivity and Spaces of 
Loss in the Fiction of Paule Constant 
Margot Miller 
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003 
Reviewed by Marla H. Kohlman 
Margot Miller's avowed purpose in writing I n  Search of Shelter is to "bring 
critical attention in the English-speaking world to the work of Paule Constant, 
an award winning and decidedly disturbing author" (9). Constant's collected 
works, Miller argues, are particularly important to scholars of postcolonial 
studies because they give voice to the complicity and struggle located in 
interpersonal relationships, and in the historical effects of having been either 
Journal of the As~ociationfor Research on Mothering / 187 
Book Reviews 
colonizer or colonized at the macro-level of national identity. 
Miller utilizes psychological theory to explain the importance to Constant 
of seeking safety and shelter within relationships governed by oppression and 
submission. As she argues, "Constant at once insists on the value of the female 
and of female characters as representations of the struggle for human connec- 
tion" (132). Constant's work exemplifies the belief that writing is at once a 
volitional act and one that bears the mark of institutional influence. In 
challenging discourse and giving voice to the oppressed, writing has the 
subversive potential of undermining current ideological narratives. But when 
it is regulated by institutions that often are organized systems of oppression, 
writing can also be repressive. 
Miller's discussion draws on the work of Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, 
and Julia Kristeva. She exposes the agency ofwomen who face dilemmas that 
either exacerbate their victimization or allow them to extricate themselves from 
their submissive positions. Miller argues, in fact, that "[llike many contempo- 
rary French and Francophone writers who expose violent situations both to 
denounce them and to reclaim their voice/existence, Constant creates in her 
fictional world a profound sense of the psychological exile matched by its 
geographical counterpart that her characters experience" (153). Time and 
again, Constant's fictional characters are required to suffer devastating losses 
because of the choices they make within their constrained circumstances, even 
as they hope to find fulfillment in relationships with others. Miller character- 
izes this dilemma as "the fundamental problem of individual responsibility in 
the face of oppression" (148). In fact, much of Miller's work is devoted to plot 
summary in support of her argument that "Constant's novels show us that 
because of these 'choices' the role of individual and social responsibility in 
personal loss transcends such specific political questions as race, gender, 
religion, or ethnicity" (151). When she provides painstaking plot summaries of 
Constant's fictional texts, however, Miller becomes pedantic. 
Written from a feminist perspective, I n  Search of Sheiter is an important 
contribution to postcolonial studies. Miller recognizes that Constant's depic- 
tion of fictional characters is not feminist; she argues instead that Constant's 
gendered institutions, shaped by cultural contexts, both grant and deny agency 
to individuals. Miller's book is particularly valuable for its explication of 
Constant's narratives that concern themselves with the representation of male 
and female characters who seek shelter in the veryrelationships that make them 
complicit in their own oppression. 
188 1 Volume 7, Number 2 


In Search of Shelter: Subjectivity and Spaces of Loss in the Fiction of Paule Constant

VanderBerg, Natasja

Witnessing Dignity: Luce Irigaray on Mothers, Genealogy and the Divine