Introduction

This volume focuses on the ways in which mothers are marginalized based on intersecting identities, such as immigration status, race, class, disability, sexuality, and how these women mother from the margins. Divided into three sections, this collection brings forth the voices and experiences of mothers and highlights the institutions and laws that marginalize them.

Section One

In the first section, mothers face barriers such as institutional constraints that block them from needed resources and the ability to mother as they see fit.

Section Two

In section two, contributors examine the borders of marginalized mothering - boundaries reflected through citizenship, walls, geography, dealings with intimate partners and welfare offices, or prison bars. Readings in this section highlight mothers’ efforts to transcend, resist, or even just survive experiences with borders.

Section Three

The final section centers on mothers that explicitly adopt mothering strategies of resistance or explicitly use their status as mothers in their activism. Topics range from mothers who engage in milk sharing to mothers of color whom organize against police brutality.

Throughout the volume, contributors demonstrate the striking resilience of these mothers, and their resistance in challenging the ideologies and institutions that marginalize them.