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Losing Black Mothers, Finding Revolutionary Mothering

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2021

K. Melchor Quick Hall Open the ORCID record for K. Melchor Quick Hall [Opens in a new window]
K. Melchor Quick Hall*
Affiliation:
Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: khall2016@brandeis.edu
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Abstract

My mother is losing her mother to Alzheimer's disease. Although my mother feels loss, I am connecting through my (maternal) grandmother to our ancestors, including a deceased father and paternal grandmother. I am also connecting to a daughter who has lost her mother, through a (maternal) grandmother who, through her loss of memory, is more open to kin networks than my mother. Through deepening connections to my maternal grandmother and to my daughter, I feel I am losing my mother. I look to revolutionary mothering as a way to reconnect shattered bonds and find lost mothers. This article honors the important work of Saidiya Hartman, Dorothy Roberts, and countless revolutionary mothers.

Keywords

Black mothersslaveryadoptionmemoryfoster careBlack familiesSaidiya HartmanDorothy Robertsrevolutionary mothering
Type
Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , Fall 2021 , pp. 764 - 780
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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References

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