Textual mothers / maternal texts : motherhood in contemporary women's literatures

Fiction that reconsiders, challenges, reshapes, and/or upholds national narratives of history has long been an integral aspect of Canadian literature. Works by writers of historical fiction (from early practitioners such as John Richardson to contemporary figures such as Alice Munro and George Elliott Clarke) propose new views and understandings of Canadian history and individual relationships to it. Critical evaluation of these works sheds light on the complexity of these depictions. The contributors in National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada critically examine texts with subject matter ranging from George Vancouver's west coast explorations to the eradication of the Beothuk in Newfoundland. Reflecting diverse methodologies and theoretical approaches, the essays seek to explicate depictions of "the historical" in individual texts and to explore larger questions relating to historical fiction as a genre with complex and divergent political motivations and goals. Although the topics of the essays vary widely, as a whole the collection raises (and answers) questions about the significance of the roles historical fiction has played within Canadian culture for nearly two centuries. Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgements......Page 10 Introduction: Maternal Literatures in Text and Tradition: Daughter-Centric, Matrilineal, and Matrifocal Perspectives......Page 14 Part 1: Maternal Absence......Page 42 1. Aberrant, Absent, Alienated: Reading the Maternal in Jane Urquhart’s First Two Novels, The Whirlpool and Changing Heaven......Page 44 2. Motherless Daughters: The Absent Mothers in Margaret Atwood......Page 60 3. Writing about Abusive Mothers: Ethics and Auto/biography......Page 76 4. “Red Mother”: The Missing Mother Plot as Double Mystery in Louise Erdrich’s Fiction......Page 92 5. “This was her punishment”: Jew, Whore, Mother in the Fiction of Adele Wiseman and Lilian Nattel......Page 108 Part 2: Maternal Ambivalence......Page 122 6. Eden Robinson’s “Dogs in Winter”: Parodic Extremes of Mothering......Page 124 7. Subverting the Saintly Mother: The Novels of Gabrielle Poulin......Page 138 8. “Opaque with confusion and shame”: Maternal Ambivalence in Rita Dove’s Poetry......Page 154 9. Maternal Blitz: Harriet Lovatt as Postpartum Sufferer in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child......Page 170 10. We Need to Talk about Gender: Mothering and Masculinity in Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin......Page 182 Part 3: Maternal Agency......Page 198 11. Narrating Maternal Subjectivity: Memoirs from Motherhood......Page 200 12. The Motherhood Memoir and the “New Momism”: Biting the Hand That Feeds You......Page 216 13. “I had to make a future, willful, voluble, lascivious”: Minnie Bruce Pratt’s Disruptive Lesbian Maternal Narratives......Page 228 14. Lesbian Mothering in Contemporary French Literature......Page 240 15. But She’s a Mom! Sex, Motherhood, and the Poetry of Sharon Olds......Page 254 16. (Grand)mothering “Children of the Apocalypse”: A Post-postmodern Ecopoetic Reading of Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners......Page 266 Part 4: Maternal Communication......Page 284 17. Colonialism’s Impact on Mothering: Jamaica Kincaid’s Rendering of the Mother–Daughter Split in Annie John......Page 286 18. Mother to Daughter: Muted Maternal Feminism in the Fiction of Sandra Cisneros......Page 300 19. Cracking (Mother) India......Page 316 20. Asian American Mothering in the Absence of Talk Story: Obasan and Chorus of Mushrooms......Page 330 21. Baby, Boo-Boo, and Bobs: The Matrilineal Auto/biographies of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, and Eleanor Lanahan......Page 346 22. Revelations and Representations: Birth Stories and Motherhood on the Internet......Page 364 Coda: “Stories to Live By”: Maternal Literatures and Motherhood Studies......Page 380 Notes on the Contributors......Page 388 B......Page 392 D......Page 393 F......Page 394 H......Page 395 L......Page 396 M......Page 397 R......Page 398 W......Page 399 Y......Page 400 Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts focuses on mothers as subjects and as writers who produce auto/biography, fiction, and poetry about maternity. International contributors examine the mother without child, with child, and in her multiple identities as grandmother, mother, and daughter. The collection examines how authors use textual spaces to accept, negotiate, resist, or challenge traditional conceptions of mothering and maternal roles, and how these texts offer alternative practices and visions for mothers. Further, it illuminates how textual representations both reflect and help to define o.