Andrea OReilly - Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart
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Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart: summary, description and annotation
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Traces Morrisons theory of African American mothering as it is articulated in her novels, essays, speeches, and interviews.
Mothering is a central issue for feminist theory, and motherhood is also a persistent presence in the work of Toni Morrison. Examining Morrisons novels, essays, speeches, and interviews, Andrea OReilly illustrates how Morrison builds upon black womens experiences of and perspectives on motherhood to develop a view of black motherhood that is, in terms of both maternal identity and role, radically different from motherhood as practiced and prescribed in the dominant culture. Motherhood, in Morrisons view, is fundamentally and profoundly an act of resistance, essential and integral to black womens fight against racism (and sexism) and their ability to achieve well-being for themselves and their culture. The power of motherhood and the empowerment of mothering are what make possible the better world we seek for ourselves and for our children. This, argues OReilly, is Morrisons maternal theorya politics of the heart.
As an advocate of a politics of the heart, OReilly has an acute insight into discerning any threat to the preservation and continuation of traditional African American womanhood and values ... Above all, Toni Morrison and Motherhood, based on Andrea OReillys methodical research on Morrisons works as well as feminist critical resources, proffers a useful basis for understanding Toni Morrisons works. It certainly contributes to exploring in detail Morrisons rich and complex works notable from the perspectives of nurturing and sustaining African American maternal tradition. African American Review
OReilly boldly reconfigures hegemonic western notions of motherhood while maintaining dialogues across cultural differences. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering
Andrea OReilly examines Morrisons complex presentations of, and theories about, motherhood with admirable rigor and a refusal to simplify, and the result is one of the most penetrating and insightful studies of Morrison yet to appear, a book that will prove invaluable to any scholar, teacher, or reader of Morrison. South Atlantic Review
...it serves as a sort of annotated bibliography of nearly all the major theoretical work on motherhood and on Morrison as an author ... anyone conducting serious study of either Toni Morrison or motherhood, not to mention the combination, should read [this book] ... OReillys exhaustive research, her facility with theories of Anglo-American and Black feminism, and her penetrating analyses of Morrisons works result in a highly useful scholarly read. Literary Mama
By tracing both the metaphor and literal practice of mothering in Morrisons literary world, OReilly conveys Morrisons vision of motherhood as an act of resistance. American Literature
Motherhood is critically important as a recurring theme in Toni Morrisons oeuvre and within black feminist and feminist scholarship. An in-depth analysis of this central concern is necessary in order to explore the complex disjunction between Morrisons interviews, which praise black mothering, and the fiction, which presents mothers in various destructive and self-destructive modes. Kudos to Andrea OReilly for illuminating Morrisons maternal standpoint and helping readers and critics understand this difficult terrain. Toni Morrison and Motherhood is also valuable as a resource that addresses and synthesizes a huge body of secondary literature. Nancy Gerber, author of Portrait of the Mother-Artist: Class and Creativity in Contemporary American Fiction
In addition to presenting a penetrating and original reading of Toni Morrison, OReilly integrates the evolving scholarship on motherhood in dominant and minority cultures in a review that is both a composite of commonalities and a clear representation of differences. Elizabeth Bourque Johnson, University of Minnesota
Andrea OReilly is Associate Professor in the School of Womens Studies at York University and President of the Association for Research on Mothering. She is the author and editor of several books on mothering, including (with Sharon Abbey) Mothers and Daughters: Connection, Empowerment, and Transformation and Mothers and Sons: Feminism, Masculinity, and the Struggle to Raise Our Sons.
Mothering is a central issue for feminist theory, and motherhood is also a persistent presence in the work of Toni Morrison. Examining Morrisons novels, essays, speeches, and interviews, Andrea OReilly illustrates how Morrison builds upon black womens experiences of and perspectives on motherhood to develop a view of black motherhood that is, in terms of both maternal identity and role, radically different from motherhood as practiced and prescribed in the dominant culture. Motherhood, in Morrisons view, is fundamentally and profoundly an act of resistance, essential and integral to black womens fight against racism (and sexism) and their ability to achieve well-being for themselves and their culture. The power of motherhood and the empowerment of mothering are what make possible the better world we seek for ourselves and for our children. This, argues OReilly, is Morrisons maternal theorya politics of the heart.
As an advocate of a politics of the heart, OReilly has an acute insight into discerning any threat to the preservation and continuation of traditional African American womanhood and values ... Above all, Toni Morrison and Motherhood, based on Andrea OReillys methodical research on Morrisons works as well as feminist critical resources, proffers a useful basis for understanding Toni Morrisons works. It certainly contributes to exploring in detail Morrisons rich and complex works notable from the perspectives of nurturing and sustaining African American maternal tradition. African American Review
OReilly boldly reconfigures hegemonic western notions of motherhood while maintaining dialogues across cultural differences. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering
Andrea OReilly examines Morrisons complex presentations of, and theories about, motherhood with admirable rigor and a refusal to simplify, and the result is one of the most penetrating and insightful studies of Morrison yet to appear, a book that will prove invaluable to any scholar, teacher, or reader of Morrison. South Atlantic Review
...it serves as a sort of annotated bibliography of nearly all the major theoretical work on motherhood and on Morrison as an author ... anyone conducting serious study of either Toni Morrison or motherhood, not to mention the combination, should read [this book] ... OReillys exhaustive research, her facility with theories of Anglo-American and Black feminism, and her penetrating analyses of Morrisons works result in a highly useful scholarly read. Literary Mama
By tracing both the metaphor and literal practice of mothering in Morrisons literary world, OReilly conveys Morrisons vision of motherhood as an act of resistance. American Literature
Motherhood is critically important as a recurring theme in Toni Morrisons oeuvre and within black feminist and feminist scholarship. An in-depth analysis of this central concern is necessary in order to explore the complex disjunction between Morrisons interviews, which praise black mothering, and the fiction, which presents mothers in various destructive and self-destructive modes. Kudos to Andrea OReilly for illuminating Morrisons maternal standpoint and helping readers and critics understand this difficult terrain. Toni Morrison and Motherhood is also valuable as a resource that addresses and synthesizes a huge body of secondary literature. Nancy Gerber, author of Portrait of the Mother-Artist: Class and Creativity in Contemporary American Fiction
In addition to presenting a penetrating and original reading of Toni Morrison, OReilly integrates the evolving scholarship on motherhood in dominant and minority cultures in a review that is both a composite of commonalities and a clear representation of differences. Elizabeth Bourque Johnson, University of Minnesota
Andrea OReilly is Associate Professor in the School of Womens Studies at York University and President of the Association for Research on Mothering. She is the author and editor of several books on mothering, including (with Sharon Abbey) Mothers and Daughters: Connection, Empowerment, and Transformation and Mothers and Sons: Feminism, Masculinity, and the Struggle to Raise Our Sons.
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toni morrison and motherhood
TONI MORRISON
and
MOTHERHOOD
and
MOTHERHOOD
A Politics of the Heart
ANDREA OREILLY
Published by
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
ALBANY
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
ALBANY
2004 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact
State University of New York Press,
Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
State University of New York Press,
Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie Searl
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
OReilly, Andrea, 1961
Toni Morrison and motherhood : a politics of the heart / Andrea OReilly.
p. cm.
Based on authors thesis (Ph.D.)York University.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-7914-6075-4 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-7914-6076-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Morrison, ToniCharactersMothers. 2. Domestic fiction, AmericanHistory and criticism. 3. Morrison, ToniPolitical and social views. 4. African American families in literature. 5. African American women in literature. 6. Mother and child in literature. 7. Motherhood in literature. 8. Mothers in literature. I. Title.
Toni Morrison and motherhood : a politics of the heart / Andrea OReilly.
p. cm.
Based on authors thesis (Ph.D.)York University.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-7914-6075-4 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-7914-6076-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Morrison, ToniCharactersMothers. 2. Domestic fiction, AmericanHistory and criticism. 3. Morrison, ToniPolitical and social views. 4. African American families in literature. 5. African American women in literature. 6. Mother and child in literature. 7. Motherhood in literature. 8. Mothers in literature. I. Title.
PS3563.O8749Z79 2004
813.54dc22
813.54dc22
2004041739
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for Terry Conlin
Contents
Preface
Di Brandt begins the prologue to her book Wild Woman Dancing (1993) discussing how the birth of her first child in 1976 called into question all that she had learnedor thought she had learnedin her Masters English literature program completed the same year. She writes: It was like falling into a vacuum, narratively speaking. I realized suddenly, with a shock, that none of the texts I had read so carefully, none of the literary skills I had acquired so diligently as a student of literature, had anything remotely to do with the experience of becoming a mother (3). Similarly, I first became a mother the same year I completed an Honors B.A. in English and Womens Studies (1984). Two years later I began a Ph.D. in English and gave birth to my second child four months later in December 1986. Twenty-five years old with two children born in under three years and the only mother in my Ph.D. program, I hungered for stories by and about mothers and wondered, as did Brandt, Where... were the mothers, symbolic or otherwise, whom I might have turned to in that moment of loneliness and desperation? (4). My graduate specialization was in the field of Womens Studies in English, and so I turned to womens literature and feminist theory in search of the absent mother. However, in 1986 little had been published in feminist theory or feminist literary theory on the topic of mothering-motherhood, and what had been written tended to reenact the patriarchal marginalization of motherhood. It would seem that Di Brandts observation that the mother has been so largely absent in Western narrative, not because she is unnarratable, but because her subjectivity has been violently, and repeatedly, suppressed (7) held true for most early feminist thinking on motherhood as well. Fortunately, as a Canadian resident and scholar, the mother-centered works of Canadian women writers Margaret Laurence, Adele Wiseman, and Joy Obasan was known to me. But I longed for more. My quest led me to the rediscovered late-eighteenth-century women writers who engaged with the topic of motherhood, in both narrative and essay form, and whose writings gave rise to the ideology of moral motherhood that in turn became the maternal feminism of the suffragist movement of the late nineteenth century. I rationalized that though I did not research directly womens narratives on mothering or feminist thought on motherhood, I did at least study, from a historical perspective, the emergence of the ideology and institution of motherhood. And so my fields of specialization became womens studies in literature and eighteenth-century literature.
All of this changed one cold and snowy night in February 1988. That fall I had signed up for a course on the African American novel and in the second term we moved to black womens fiction. I had tucked my one- and three-year-olds into bed with plans to begin the novel due for next weeks class; the novel was Toni Morrisons Beloved (1987). I do not remember much from that night except that I finished the book at four in the morning when I should have been sleeping, given that my children would be up in two hours, and realized that I had found the maternal narrative for which I had been searching. In the three weeks that followed, I read all of Morrisons novels and met with my professor of African American literature and asked if she would be my supervisor for a dissertation on mothering and Toni Morrison. She asked me if I was sure, given that such a switch would add time to a Ph.D. already delayed by the birth of my two and soon to be three children. Yes, I was sure.
In the fifteen years that have passed since I first read Morrison, I have been asked on numerous occasions, Why Morrison? Or, more specifically, people wondered how I, a woman of English, Scottish, Irish ancestry who grew up in working-class Hamilton in southern Ontario, Canada, got so hooked on Morrison and motherhood. Every time I was asked this question, and even now as I finish this book on Morrison, I find myself at a loss for an explanation. I am a mother, and though my experiences of motherhood differ substantially from those narrated in Morrison, I nonetheless felt more at home in Morrisons maternal world than that of Anglo-American feminist thought. By 1988 when I first read Morrison, I was well versed in seventies and eighties Anglo-American feminist thinking on motherhood and yet never felt a sense of belonging or connection with this body of knowledge. Most of Anglo-American feminist writing on motherhood in 1988, with the notable exceptions of Sara Ruddick and Adrienne Rich, was daughter-centric and approached motherhood only as it had been defined by patriarchal culture. Specifically, it was work women did in the privacy of their homes that had no political import or cultural value and was oppressive to women. Morrison portrays motherhood, in all of its dimensionsmotherwork, motherlove, and the motherlineas a political enterprise with social consequences. This made sense to me. And when she remarked in an interview, There was something so valuable about what happened when one became a mother. For me it was the most liberating thing that ever happened... (1989: interview with Bill Moyers), I could not have agreed more.
When I first read Morrison, I analyzed her portrayals of mothers and motherhood through the lens of Anglo-American feminist thought on motherhood, as there was little published on black motherhood in 1987 and I was not familiar By the time I came to write this book in 1999, research on black motherhood was far more available to me than it had been in 1988 (though more scholarship in this field is still urgently needed) and I had a far more extensive, diverse, and vibrant Anglo-American feminist tradition on motherhood from which to draw.
The intent of a preface is traditionally to introduce the books thesis and to outline its format. To this business I now turn. The intent of this book is to read Morrison as a maternal theorist. The first chapter will examine black womens experiences of, and perspectives on motherhood; next it will explore how Morrison, building upon the traditions of black motherhood, defines motherhood as a site of power for black women and describes motherwork as enterprise concerned specifically with the empowerment of children. The remaining five chapters will explore how Morrisons maternal theory is enacted in her seven novels. Morrison, in her rendition of mothering as a political and public enterprise, emerges as a social commentator and political theorist who radically, through her maternal philosophy, reworks, rethinks, and reconfigures the concerns and strategies of African American, and in particular black womens, emancipation in America. In this, Morrison emerges as one of the most important and instructive voices in contemporary debates on race and gender; indeed, a voice that does and should keep you awake at night.
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