Maternity in the Post-Apocalypse : Novelistic Re-visions of Dystopian Motherhood

Maternity in the Post-Apocalypse: Novelistic Revisions of Dystopian Motherhood deconstructs the ways in which women novelists have reconceived the post-apocalyptic genre in recent decades through narratives centered on heroic maternal characters. These writers have placed midwives, pregnant women, and mothers at the forefront of their novels, transforming them from the hapless victims of male oppressors to protagonists who are instrumental in transforming the post-apocalyptic social landscape from one that attempts to reconstruct a patriarchal past to one that safeguards, validates, and even lauds maternity as a form of empowerment. In a novelistic future devastated landscape in which human civilizations are shattered and waver at the brink of extinction, women who embody facets of maternity are taking the reins of rebuilding human societies by overturning patriarchal assumptions of femininity, reclaiming intersectional autonomy, and (re)visioning the possibilities for a declining anthropocene. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Introduction Intersectionality Overturning the Paternal Symbolic Maternal Post-Catastrophe Futures Note Chapter 1: GESTATION: The Crisis of Native Pregnancy in The Future Home of the Living God (2017) Motherhood in Plurality Maternity in Decline Maternal Agency Redefined Fathers Defectum and Mothers Invictus Sera Virginia, Sweetie, Mary, and Marian Subversion Mother Is the New Authoritarian in Town Amniotic Transition into the Post-Apocalypse Eschatological Indigeneity Notes Chapter 2: BIRTH: Deliverance through Plague in The Unnamed Midwife (2016) Gender Identity and the Inherently Intersectional Silent Mother and the Still, Still Born The Colony and Collapse of Patriarchal Maternity Matriarchal Law and a New Hive Mentality Birth in the Post-apocalyptic Æther Notes Chapter 3: NEW MOTHER: To Resist and Dis-Obeah in the Wasted Inner City of Brown Girl in the Ring (1999) Intersectional Single Motherhood Supernatural Caribbean Maternal Legacy Magical Women and the Threat to Patriarchal Order Conclusion Notes Chapter 4: MATERNAL FUTURES: Maternity and the Holy Book in Parable of the Talents (1999) and Who Fears Death (2014) Countergenealogies and Religious Literacy as the Road to a Maternal Future Mothers, Daughters, and (Re)Writing the New Order Maternal Afrofuturism Conclusion Conclusion Afterword Works Cited Index About the Author "This book investigates how contemporary post-apocalyptic novels place maternal characters at the forefront of rebuilding and reconceiving a devastated world. By overturning patriarchal assumptions about the post-catastrophe world and women's place in it, the writers of the maternal post-apocalypse offer a (re)vision of speculative literature"-- Provided by publisher