Narrating Motherhoods Breaking The Silence

Download or read book Narrating Motherhood(s), Breaking the Silence written by Silvia Caporale-Bizzini and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2006 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feminist theory on motherhood has successfully transformed mothers into subjects of their own discourse, recognized the historical, heterogeneous and socially constructed origins of their life experience while, at the same time, widening our understanding of the notion of mothering. This collection combines a literary and a wider cultural perspective from which to look at the topic of the representation of other or forgotten motherhoods. Mothers who have been forced to live exiled and away from their children, women who after trying to conceive, get pregnant but discover they cannot bear to become mothers, or even literary characters based on an autobiographical experience of a sexually abusive mother. The essays critically point out how writing becomes a tool to think and write about the many aspects of motherhood such as an idealized maternal experience versus the real one or the accepted stereotypes of the good mother and the bad mother.