Review by Sarah Walker Caron
I never considered myself a feminist. Even as I parented outside the confines of what mother is “supposed” to look like, I didn’t apply feminism to what I was doing. That all changed when I became a single mother in my 30s, starting over with my children in a new state and eventually obtaining a divorce.
That experience of rediscovery and redefining myself is what drew me to Coming Into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism, edited by Andrea O’Reilly, Fiona Joy Green, and Victoria Bailey. This academic book of essays on feminist mothering takes the very idea and turns it around in the light to see all angles through a series of essays by academic mothers on the subject.
The book is divided into three sections: “Losing and Finding;” “Challenging and Critiquing;” and
Connecting and Conversing.” Within each section are a series of essays (and occasional poems and art pieces) that explore the section theme and the overarching theme of feminism. Each author defines and places themselves within the construct of feminism, chipping away at the parts that don’t feel comfortable or fitting. They struggle against their life experiences, defining and redefining as they explore feminism within their mothering journey.
Heather E. Dillaway writes about this in her essay, “Journey through Feminist Motherhood: Reflections on Identity and Practice.” Dillaway writes: “Upon reflection, I find that I am attempting to reach two intertwined goals: maintaining my own personhood while mothering and raising children who understand and support gender equality” (31).
Some essays are academically dense, filled with citations and connections. Others are more creative like “Sunrise” by Lianne Milton, a pictorial of the many facets of her feminist motherhood. Milton writes, “In becoming a mother, I gave birth to a new kind of feminism— an embrace of my maternal power as an act of defiance. I voted to maintain the same agency as a mother-artist that I had before having a baby” (49).
With topics ranging from the re-identification of oneself as an artist after becoming a mother to single motherhood to teenage motherhood to immigrant motherhood to the racism experienced in the hospital setting by an indigenous mother, this is a series of thought-provoking essays that challenge norms and shed light on experiences beyond the reader’s own.
Lili Shi’s essay, “Meandering Through the Intersections,” explores her experience as a Chinese immigrant married to a white American who must confront her heritage and balance its expectations even as she aims to raise her children to embrace their heritage and eschew racism and misogyny. She concludes by writing, “My feminist mothering works best when it is invitational, dynamic, and not unidirectional. As a feminist mother, I am always on the journey of becoming.” (158)
At times while reading this, I cringed. Dillaway’s fixation on “paid work” seems to suggest that mothers who divide their time between mothering and other commitments that don’t draw a paycheck are somehow not doing the important work that those who work outside the home are. She writes: “I knew how important it was to protect mother time, but I refused to give up paid work time. I struggled to maintain the boundaries between my two types of time and failed to get the balance right on many days.” (37) As a young mother, I also divided my time between mothering and other work, sometimes unpaid. Was my work less significant because it didn’t result in a paycheck? Was that balance of self and mother not important? Does it matter that the work was intended to build toward paying work later (and that it all panned out and still produces a significant income)?
This is the kind of thought-provoking dialogue this volume evokes. As a work of academics, presented in mostly academic essays, this could be the perfect scholarly work to read alongside mainstream writing about motherhood in a university course. I can picture the conversations that would arise while reading these essays, one by one, and dissecting the ideas in them while seeking a better understanding — and perhaps a modern revision — of what feminism can be.
Coming Into Being edited by Andrea O’Reilly, Fiona Joy Green, and Victoria Bailey
Demeter Press, 2023
ISBN: 9781772584493
Sarah Walker Caron is a Pushcart nominated essayist as well as a food writer and author. Her work has appeared in Farmer-ish, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, SheKnows and more. Her latest cookbook, Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts: Official Wizarding World Cookbook, is available where books are sold.