Mothering Across Cultures: Postcolonial Representations

by Angelita Reyes

Overview

A multifaceted exploration of memory, mothering, literature, and postcoloniality.

Blending the personal and the historical, the practical and the theoretical, Angelita Reyes draws on a wide range of texts from Africa and the African diaspora to establish mothering as a paradigm of progressive feminisms. Reyes creates a comparative dialogue among the fictions of five postcolonial women writers: Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Jean Rhys, and Mariama Bâ.

Reyes discusses the theme of mothering as a human reality, as a paradigm for cultural crossings, and as what she refers to as autobiographical memory-telling. Not only does her work explore the fraught relationships among memory, history, and mothering, but it also questions conventional ways of approaching the often fragmented testimony and artifacts of the lives of women of African descent.

Finally, Reyes uses memory-telling to present the autobiography of her own mother, whose extended American family said she "married a Spanish Negro who don’t speak good English." Her blending of authorial, critical, historical, and autobiographical voices in this work extends our understanding of the cross-cultural ideas of mothering.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816623532
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	12/20/2001
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Angelita Reyes is associate professor and Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Afro-American and African Studies and the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction: I'm Not Mad, I'm Postcolonial, a Woman, and a Mother	1
1	Taking Flight and Taking Foot: From Margaret Garner to Beloved	33
2	Surrogate Mothering: Maroon Nanny, Jean Rhys, and Marronage	78
3	Refusing to Live on Scent: Textures of Memory by Way of Pluie et vent sur Telumee Miracle	113
4	Crossing Bridges and Memory-Telling: Une si longue lettre	142
5	From a Lineage of Southern Women: She Has Left Us Empty and Full of Her	172
	Appendixes
A.	Legacies of Margaret Garner	193
B.	From Periodical Accounts Relating to the Missions of the Church of the United Brethren Established among the Heathen	205
	Notes	207
	Bibliography	219
	Index	239