Rama Salla Dieng - Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond

Feminist Parenting

Perspectives from Africa and Beyond

edited by Rama Salla Dieng and Andrea OReilly

Feminist Parenting

Perspectives from Africa and Beyond

Edited by Rama Salla Dieng and Andrea OReilly

Copyright 2020 Demeter Press

Individual copyright to their work is retained by the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Feminist parenting: perspectives from Africa and beyond /
Rama Salla Dieng and Andrea OReilly, editors.

Names: Dieng, Rama Salla, 1986- editor. | OReilly, Andrea, 1961- editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana 20200164147 | ISBN 9781772582284 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Parenthood. | LCSH: ParenthoodAfrica. |
LCSH: Parenting. | LCSH: ParentingAfrica. | LCSH: Feminism. |
LCSH: FeminismAfrica. | LCSH: Sex role. | LCSH: Sex roleAfrica.

Classification: LCC HQ755.8.F46 2020 | DDC 306.874096dc23

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the 28 mothers and fathers and their families who accepted my invitation to share their stories. Without their rich contri-butions, this book would not have been possible. I am also thankful to all the people who connected me with other key resource persons for this project to become a reality, my publisher and reviewers, and all the scholars who endorsed the book. My warmest thoughts go to you, my soulmate for your constant presence, and to you my daughter: you two are my bedrock! You have been an inexhaustible source and resource of warmth, hope, perseverance, and faith throughout the project, which took almost three years.

I am also grateful to all the previous generations of feminist writers, activists, and scholars from Africa and beyond who inspired me to become the feminist I am today. To you, my mother, thanks for teaching me to dance through the rain. Jrjf!

Anta, my sister. I love you more than ever. I dedicate this book to you and to our little gems.

Rama Salla Dieng

My deepest appreciation to the contributors of the collection for their steadfast commitment to the book and to our copy editor Jesse OReilly-Conlin and designer Michelle Pirovich, whose tireless and skilled labour brought the book to life. Thank you again to my Demeter family of motherhood researchers and writers for providing the safe and sustaining homeplace that makes possible my motherhood scholarship. And finally much love and thanks, as always, to Terry Conlin, my most avid supporter, toughest critic, closest friend, and my partner in life.

Andrea OReilly

Contents

Part I
Feminist Mothering Journeys

Chapter 3
Intuitive Feminist Parenting
Jael Silliman

Chapter 4
Feminist Parenting: A Memoir in Motion
Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey

Chapter 6
Becoming an African Feminist Parent
Satang Nabaneh

Chapter 7
A Muslim Feminist Mother
Astou Ka

Chapter 8
Parenting across Cultures, Continents, and Generations
Kathryn Toure

Chapter 9
A Young Womans Voice Does Not Break, It Grows Firmer
Rama Salla Dieng

Chapter 10
Feminist Parenting from the Lens of a Muslim Woman
Kula Fofana

Part II
Parenting Is Political: Of Feminist Mothers Struggles and Resistance

Chapter 22
Feminism and Ecology:
A Complicated, Questionable Equation?
Elisabeth

Part III
Contributions from African Feminist Fathers and Children

Chapter 24
What My Mom and My Daughter Taught Me
Cheikh Keyti Sne

Introduction

Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond

Rama Salla Dieng

In my view, the work of women in Africa is located at the boundary where the academy meets what lies beyond it, a third space where the immediacy of lived experience gives form to theory, allows the simultaneous gesture of theorizing practice and practicing theory, and anticipates the mediation of policy, thereby disrupting the notion of the academy and activism as stable sites.

Obioma Nnaemeka 377

We are moving on at a time of crossings, of seeing each other at the colonial difference constructing a new subject of a new feminist geopolitics of knowing and loving.

Maria Lugones 75

Why an Anthology on Feminist Parenting?

The thirty contributors from diverse backgrounds, walks of life, and countries gathered in this anthology share powerful responses to the above questions by narrating their experiences of some of the challenges, dilemmas, promises, and compromises of parenting with a feminist perspective. This volume is one of the first collections published with first-person essays from feminist academics, industrial professionals or policymakers, activists or students, as well as allies; these essays describe very touching, beautiful, and sometimes painful stories of what it means and, more importantly, what it costs to become a feminist parent. In doing so, we aim to reclaim parenting as a necessarily political terrain for subversion, radical transformation, and resistance to patriarchal oppression, sexism, and racism.

This anthology will no doubt enrich the current literature on feminist parenting, in which voices of women and men from the geographic ensemble often referred to as the Global SouthAfrica and its diaspora in particularhave been missing. Therefore, this anthology fills a gap in the literature, as its essays seek to theorize feminist mothering, fathering, and parenting practices from the daily lives and experiences of parents in Africa, its diaspora, Asia, South and North America, and Western Europe. The countries represented in this volume are Ghana, Ecuador, Senegal, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Cote dIvoire, South Africa, Liberia, India, the Gambia, Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.

By presenting viewpoints from such diverse perspectives, the aim of the book is to record first-person narratives on the meanings and practice of feminist parenting in different socioeconomic, cultural, and political contexts. This collection takes into consideration a wide range of feminist viewpoints, identities, and practices, including African, queer, Islamic, secular, ecological, radical, liberal, and global. The book also discusses the ways in which loss, trauma, sickness, healing, and distance influence the feminist parenting experience. Moreover, it also explores alternative ways of parenting, not only through birthing but also through adoption, fostering, or caring for significant others.

Any parent, parent-to-be, or carer will be if not interested then curious about our anthology on feminist parenting. In fact, most of the scholarship on the topic focuses on feminist mothering rather than feminist parenting (Rich; Ruddick; Gordon; Reddy; Acholonu; Horwitz; OReilly; Green; Adichie; Oywm; Comerford et al.) or feminist/progressive fathering (Neal; Mutua; Richter and Morell; Moniz and Smith). This collection aims to complement the growing literature on feminist parenting and questions implicit assumptions concerning gender in the feminist mothering literature; it proposes that the concept of parenting is not simply the sum of mothering and fathering.