\u201cLoneliness, unshared grief, and guilt often led to prolonged melancholy or mental breakdown.<\/p>\n
If the frontier\u2026<\/p>\n
offered (some) women<\/p>\n
a greater equality and independence, and the<\/p>\n
chance<\/p>\n
to break out of more traditional roles, it also, ironically, deprived many of the emotional support and intimacy of female community; it<\/p>\n
tore them from their mothers.\u201d<\/p>\n
I rearranged a portion of the extensive paragraph Rich wrote in \u201cOf Woman Born\u201d with the intention of allowing openness to a culture of mothers, who would not have been previously allowed to share in the loneliness and grief because of Rich\u2019s original white European perspective. I intentionally chose to break up lines from the paragraph, such as \u201cif the frontier\u201d to show that the frontier is borderless and can extend to other mothers and other cultures. Additionally, I decided to leave \u201ctore them from their mothers\u201d as the final line because of the literal and figurative implications of the phrase. Where do we see that through our own experiences, but also where have we seen that throughout history? Essentially, I felt that this version serves as a historical reference, but also an openness to contemporary motherhood.<\/p>\n
I was particularly struck by this quote from Adrienne Rich\u2019s \u201cOf Woman Born: Motherhood and Daughterhood\u201d not only because of what it stated, but also because of what it did not state. I was able to resonate with Rich\u2019s opening words regarding the adoration she had for her mother\u2019s body as a sort of mirroring of her own. However, Rich speaks from a white, mostly European cultural connection toward motherhood – one that I, as an Afro-Latina, do not connect to. I found that this cultural disconnect was apparent, particularly on page 234 when Rich describes the immigrant European diaspora mother experience as one riddled with loneliness and isolation.<\/p>\n
I understand Rich\u2019s contributions to feminist theory were radical at the time – considering the fact that she came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s – but I feel as though the diaspora of non-European cultures is non-existent. What about the narratives of motherhood that existed during the slave trade? What about the narrative of motherhood that existed during mass genocides, essentially eradicating generations of motherly history? What about the narratives of mothers who were born without ever knowing their mothers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cLoneliness, unshared grief, and guilt often led to prolonged melancholy or mental breakdown. If the frontier\u2026 offered (some) women a greater equality and independence, and the chance to break out of more traditional roles, it also, ironically, deprived many of the emotional support and intimacy of female community; it tore them from their mothers.\u201d I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2273,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208\/revisions\/2273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}