New Maternalisms”: Tales of Motherwork (Dislodging the Unthinkable) explores the perceptions of those who engage in and/or research motherwork or the labour of caregiving, and how mothers view themselves in comparison to broader normative understandings of motherwork. Here, the anthology serves to deconstruct motherwork by highlighting and dislodging it from maternal ideology, the socially constructed “good mom” (read as “sacrificial mom”) and feminized hegemonic discourse. The objective of the edited volume, then, is to critically explore how we experience motherwork, what motherwork might mean, and how motherwork impacts and is impacted by the communities in which we live. Such an examination involves contesting dominant ways of thinking about motherwork.

Roksana Badruddoja is a feminine and masculine woman, a Bangladeshi American, a queer, a Muslim, a mother to a fierce 12-year-old girl, and a professor of sociology and women’s and gender studies. Before joining the faculty at Manhattan College, she was the Vice President of Research for the Partnership for the Homeless in NYC, and up until then, she was a professor at California State University, Fresno. She teaches courses on feminist research methods, women of color in the U.S., feminist activism, race and ethnicity, sociology of gender, and representations of women. Dr. Badruddoja’s research in the areas of race and ethnicity, sexuality, gender, religion, and culture, and how these impact South Asian American women has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals. These include the National Women’s Studies Association Journal, the International Journal of Sociology of the Family, and the International Review of Modern Sociology. She is the author of Eyes of the Storms: The Voices of South Asian-American Women.

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Maki Motapanyane is an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies in the Department of Humanities at Mount Royal University. Her teaching is rooted in liberatory pedagogy, focused in courses on colonialism and de-colonization, global gender issues and transnationalism, environmental justice/liberation ecology, and Hip-Hop culture. Her research spans the fields of feminist theory, motherhood and cultural studies, with academic publications featuring a range of inter-related thematic interests including feminist theory, transnational feminist research methods, mothering and motherhood, racialized comedy in Canada, and gender in Hip-Hop culture. She is the editor of Mothering in Hip-Hop Culture: Representation and Experience (Demeter Press, 2012), and co-editor (with Roksana Badruddoja) of “New Maternalisms”: Tales of Motherwork (Dislodging the Unthinkable) (Demeter Press, 2016).

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