Imagining Motherhood in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Literature, 1st ed. 2016 New Caribbean Studies Series

Imagining Motherhood in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Literature undertakes a comparative transnational reading to develop more expansive literary models of good mothering. Abigail L. Palko argues that Irish and Caribbean literary representations of non-normative mothering practices do not reflect transgressive or dangerous mothering but are rather cultural negotiations of the definition of a good mother. This original book demonstrates the sustained commitment to countering the dominant ideologies of maternal self-sacrifice foundational to both Irish and Caribbean nationalist rhetoric, offering instead the possibility of integrating maternal agency into an effective model of female citizenship.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Embryonic Beginnings            

Chapter 1 – “A mother-of-sufferer”: Subversive Mothering in the Caribbean and Irish Traditions 

Part I: Rejecting Motherhood

Chapter 2 – The Traumatized Not-Mother    

Chapter 3 – The Motherless Not-Mother       

Part II: Redefining Motherhood        

Chapter 4 – The Lesbian Daughter    

Chapter 5 – The Lesbian Mother                   

Conclusion: “If you can’t trust me with choice, how can you trust me with a child?”         

Works Cited    

Abigail L. Palko is the Associate Director of the Gender Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame, USA. A Faculty Fellow of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and an Affiliate Faculty member of the Department of Africana Studies, she researches and teaches contemporary Irish and Caribbean novels, focusing on their representations of motherhood.