Woven Threads: (Building Bonds in Othermothering and Community Mothering)

This illuminating collection moves beyond the perspectives of mothering and motherhood as an individual practice. Here, attention is given to how caretaking is extended in a myriad ways, especially in familial systems and community networks. These chapters reveal multidisciplinary perspectives that include sociology, literary studies, health, cultural studies, media studies, history, law, women’ s and gender studies, and personal narratives. In each conversation with the reader, the collection reflects on how othermothering strengthens core bonds within the community. The core tenet of feminist theory and practice, “ the personal is political” , becomes through the essays an invitation to reconceive the structures of parenting from, not only a critical, historical, and analytical perspective, but also from the stories that support and bring those analyses to the foreground. Here, othermothering is rescue and the collection, by sharing these diverse narratives, becomes a valuable tool – an apparatus for building community.