Dani McClain - We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood

Dani McClain reminds us why Black women, specifically Black mothers, are the backbones of every single society. While we are often neglected and disenfranchised, our labor is what has built democracies around the globe. This is a must read for all Black mamas and our allies. Thank you, Dani, and thank you, Danis daughter, for showing us the way forward.

Patrisse Khan-Cullors, author of When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

Dani McClain charts the rich territory of black motherhood, an element of American life that is overlooked and undervalued even as our society benefits from its tenacity and love. We Live for the We is deeply researched, compassionately reported, and soars with the beauty and urgency of McClains truest expertise: her own life as a black woman raising a young daughter. Parenting is political and we all have much to learn from the work McClain chronicles in these pages. This book is a gift, and it is for everyone.

Angela Garbes, author of Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy

Dani McClains We Live for the We is more than a reimagining of motherhood. Its an equally soulful and skillful immersion into the questions of how we go beyond survival in a nation intent on the suffering of Black mothers and their children. The book refuses to let us run, every paragraph seeking the contour of who we really are in the dark and how our children will be protected, loved, and tenderly allowed to fail and grow by parents willing to revise what weve all been taught. This is the rare book that will change lives and public policy.

Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir

Motherhood is one of the most contested and policed categories that black women occupy in American society. With intellectual gravitas, gifted storytelling, and feminist insights, Dani McClains We Live for We brilliantly chronicles how African-American women confront these contradictions as deeply political and personal acts. This book is a timely, compassionate, and eye-opening contribution to our most pressing debates about race and gender.

Salamishah Tillet, Henry Rutgers Professor of African American and African Studies and Creative Writing

We Live for the We is a crucial chapter in the history of Black motherhood as a political act. Enslaved mothers taught their babies to read without being discovered, now Black mothers must teach our children to stay safe from police, from sexual predators, from racist teachers. McClain shows that we must be strategic with our rage and still vulnerable with our loveour political work requires this range. This text showcases the harsh realities of Black motherhood and the best solutions currently available, while pointing to the ways we must still change everything for the sake of our children.

dream hampton, writer, filmmaker, and organizer, and producer of Surviving R. Kelly

Many mothers of my generation lacked safe and effective birth control, survived childhood sexual abuse, or were prematurely sterilized. These experiences shaped our understandings of pregnancy and motherhood. Dani McClain both acknowledges and departs from these painful realities with her portrait of motherhood as an act of liberation. She offers a window into the granularity of the challenges millennials face when parenting. This book describes parenting choices as empowering and bewildering at the same time and, in doing so, portrays the heart of Black mothering.

Loretta Ross, coauthor of Reproductive Justice: An Introduction and cofounder of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective

In this generous, well-researched book, Dani McClain bridges realism with idealism, and critique with our shared craving for the better world all of our children deserve. Generations of parents and community members will use this book to make decisions, to revive our hope, and to teach each other about the implications of difference in a stratified society. Most importantly, for me, this book engages and continues the brave multi-generational tradition of Black mothers sharing their own experiences and their revolutionary visions for the benefit of all people. Thank you, Dani McClain, for bringing your hardest questions, your rigorous observations, your priceless relationship with your daughter, and your open heart to this necessary work.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, PhD, coeditor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines

I read this book shouting YES!, throwing up praise hands, pacing the floor, overcome with gratitude! We Live for the We is a glorious exploration of how we outgrow the isolating terror of oppression and lean into the interdependent wisdom of love. McClain asks questions that require readers to changechange how we think of single parents, of discipline, good births, freedom, education, autonomy, community, safety, and ultimately, power. Conversational and precise, McClain uncovers roots of white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism in the ground beneath our childrens feet. Parents and caregivers of all backgrounds can learn from McClains deft reporting and storytelling, but Black mothers (and grandis, grammis, grandmas, aunties, sisters, godmothers, midwives, doulas and friends) will learn while also feeling celebrated and loved for how we have lived a legacy of village building, how we have survived the impossible together, and how we are responsible for a thriving Black future.

adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, and coeditor of Octavias Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

Dani McClain has produced an important work that will show the world just how powerful and transformative radical Black motherhood is and always has been. This path can be very isolating at times but its refreshing to see that Im not alone in this process and now other moms, dads, and allies will have the tools to join the fight to make the next generation more self-possessed and feminist than those before them.