Academic Mothering: Fabulating Futures for Higher Education 9004547452, 9789004547452

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Academic Mothering Fabulating Futures for Higher Education Kelly W. Guyotte, Stephanie Anne Shelton, Shelly Melchior and Carlson H. Coogler (Eds.) Foreword by Cheryl E. Matias

Academic Mothering

Academic Mothering Fabulating Futures for Higher Education Foreword by Cheryl E. Matias Edited by

Kelly W. Guyotte, Stephanie Anne Shelton, Shelly Melchior and Carlson H. Coogler

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Image by Sara Scott Shields All chapters in this book have undergone peer review. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. isbn 978-90-04-54744-5 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-54745-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-54746-9 (e-book) DOI 10.1163/9789004547469 Copyright 2024 by Kelly W. Guyotte, Stephanie Anne Shelton, Shelly Melchior and Carlson H. Coogler. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents

Foreword: Of the Passing of COVID: A Motherscholar’s Lamentation Isn’t Sad  vii Cheryl E. Matias List of Figures x Notes on Contributors xi Introduction 1 Kelly W. Guyotte, Stephanie Anne Shelton, Shelly Melchior and Carlson H. Coogler

PART 1 Mothering as Practice 1

Mothering in the Dirt: Kenning Self and Kin 17 Carlson H. Coogler

2

The Other Mothers: No, Not the Ugly Stepmothers or the Fairy Godmothers…the Teacher Mothers 37 Stephanie Anne Shelton and Tamara Brooks

3

Sources of Hope into, through & beyond Academic Mothering during the Pandemic 46 Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor

4

A Graphic Representation of Parenting in the Pandemic: Borders, Binaries, and Boundaries 57 Kate E. Kedley

PART 2 Mothering in Precarity 5

Rejecting Good Mother: Becoming Otherwise in Precarity 71 Tynetta Jenkins, Erica Warren, Susan Ophelia Cannon and Elaine Thurmond

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“I’m Not Your Superwoman”: An Exploration of the Strong Black Woman Trope and How It Affected My Doctoral Journey 87 A. C. Johnson

7

The Miscarrying Mother 101 Kelsey H. Guy

8

Compelled to Care: Academic Work in a Mother-Fucking Dystopian Hellscape 112 Mandie Bevels Dunn, Jennifer R. Wolgemuth and Lodi Lipien

PART 3 Mothering as Relational 9

Gifts and Grief: Poetic Ruminations on Academic Mothering during the COVID-19 Pandemic (and Beyond) 127 Kelly W. Guyotte

10

Queer Mothering in Academia as Pandemic Preparation: A Dialogue between QueerMotherScholarFriends 141 Jill Hermann-Wilmarth and Caitlin L. Ryan

11

Mothering and Working across Difference: Intergenerational Conversations on Living with Uncertainty 156 Daniela Gachago and Mo Gachago

12

And These Things Are Good 165 Shelly Melchior



Epilogue 177 Kerry Crawford and Leah Windsor



Index 185

FOREWoRD

Of the Passing of COVID

A Motherscholar’s Lamentation Isn’t Sad Cheryl E. Matias In his book, The Souls of Black Folk, renowned sociologist, W. E. B. Du Bois (1903), relays the story “Of the Passing of the First Born.” There, he overlayed his racial analysis of the Veil upon the context of “a Negro and a negro’s son” (p. 115), claiming the following: Holding in that little head—ah, bitterly!—he unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand—ah, wearily!—to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw the shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby, I saw the cold city towering above the blood-red land. I held my face beside his little cheek, showed him the star-children and the twinkling lights as that began to flash, and stilled with an even-song the unvoiced terror of my life. (p. 115) As Du Bois offers here, the pain of witnessing the innocence of your own child robbed by circumstances beyond your control creates a particular sense of despair that only a parent knows. That our parental instinct to protect our cubs are nothing but laughable embraces unable to provide the ironclad protection so needed is gut-wrenching. Simply put, it destroys us-parents because it seemingly strips us of our agency to parent. In fact, of recent, I too succumbed to that level of desperation, knowing that after the expiration of a permanent restraining order against my then domestically violent husband, children of abuse are often forced to spend time with that same abuser. Alas, there is not much a woman can do to protect their children when violence, according to the court system, is oftentimes strictly defined in current physical terms—as if the lasting trauma of past physical, emotional, psychological, and financial abuse are now unworthy of further protection. And this is precisely the sense of hopelessness, moreover, terror a parent, or, more apropos to this book, a mother feels. For she, like the biblical story of King Solomon, would be more

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willing to give up her child to fate, if it guaranteed her child would be safe from harm, and in that gamble, she presumably loses. Yet, as disparaging as pain is in this sense, it still is not the real loss here. Instead, the real loss resides in the uncontrollable circumstances, be it Veil, toxic coparent, or even, in the case of this book, COVID-19. Because as these uncontrollable circumstances exert their hellish havoc, a mother transforms their chaos into a steadfast love. Meaning, amidst it all, her love grows exponentially. In the end, this pain to protect our babes only makes us more loving; a strength of surviving that no one can strip. Academic Mothering: Fabulating Futures for Higher Education attempts to capture this pain of honoring both our roles as mothers and as academics. Though COVID-19 was initially a worldwide uncontrollable pandemic now better controlled, the havoc, distress, and trauma it left behind are still felt today, especially for the many women who were bound to their homes 24-7 both working and raising children. And, as these academic mothers were forced in isolation to host classes online, attend meetings online, and conduct research online, they did so while raising children who were also confined to the home with online schooling. Literally the already blurred boundaries between work and home faded to nonexistent. Beyond commiserating on the past or present struggles of being what I call a motherscholar—one who both mothers and scholars simultaneously; whose identities equally informing the other much like Leonardo’s concept of raceclass (see Matias, 2011, 2022), this edited book is about “cultivating something hopeful for the futures of academia, and academic mothering” (Introduction). This hopeful future is captured when each author painstakingly shares their traumatic experiences of mothering while in academia during COVID-19 to inform and support a better future for other academic moms. In fact, in one chapter the authors write, “It is our hope that other mothers, queer people, and folks who feel like they are drowning in both expectations and lack of support will find our experience helpful and hopeful” (Hermann-Wilmarth & Ryan, 2023). Another author poetically ends her chapter with the following: If I were permitted one gift to leave all mothering-academics It would be that your colleagues students family friends others

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acknowledge appreciate applaud that powerful and (em) powering force —the gift— You are Both in your home and in Academe And that you would believe it too (Guyotte, 2023)

…

Clearly, whether using graphic pictorials or poetry, these authors creatively capture how a motherscholar (see Matias, 2011, 2022) transforms her own lamentations of juggling motherhood, academia, and COVID-19 into praxes of hope, community, strength, and love. For it is, as Du Bois reminds us, the passing of our own tears where we realized how deeply we love. That is, Du Bois’s lamentations over the passing of his son are indicative of how much a father loves his child. My lamentations of bearing witness to children struggling with reunification of their abusive fathers—forever fighting to protect them—are indicative of how much mothers love their children. And, in the same likeness, the lamentations presented in this book are only indicative of the love we, as motherscholars, will also have for our children, careers, and life. As such, our lamentations are not so sad. Indeed, they are just testaments to our strength. References Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). The souls of Black folk. A.C. McClurg & Co. Matias, C. E. (2011). “Cheryl Matias, PhD and mother of twins”: Counter storytelling to critically analyze how I navigate the academic application, negotiation, and relocation process [Paper]. American Educational Research Association (AERA), New ­Orleans, LA. Matias, C. E. (2022). Birthing the motherscholar and motherscholarship. Peabody Journal of Education, 97(2), 246–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2022.2055897

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 8.1 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

Roots from the cut (August 11, 2021 [sketch]). 18 New growing from old (September 10, 2021 [sketch]). 20 Leaves dying, leaves growing (Hydrangea, October 23, 2021 [sketch]). 22 The new continues to grow (November 12, 2021 [sketch]). 24 Growing exceedingly and slowly (they are not opposites, December 3, 2021 [sketch]). 26 Surprise! A further newness appears (January 1, 2022 [sketch]). 29 Living and dying kinned (February 20, 2022). 31 Across roots and gaps, life flows in (un)expected paths (March 1, 2022 [sketch]). 33 A handwritten letter expressing appreciation for the therapeutic nature of writing letters to release suppressed emotions. 75 A handwritten letter describing the overwhelming sense of fatigue caused by the ongoing and new challenges faced in the aftermath of the pandemic. 77 A handwritten letter highlighting the sense of being overlooked and undervalued while navigating the complexities of academic motherhood. 77 A handwritten letter acknowledging the prioritization of family and children over personal aspirations and life choices. 79 A handwritten letter recounting a touching moment when an academic mother was reminded to take a moment to breathe and be easy by her daughter. 83 A handwritten letter chronicling the strategies employed by an academic mother to assert her authority and influence while teaching. 84 Holmes Herald newspaper article. 121 March 14, 2020 (Day 1). 129 April 17, 2020 (Day 35). 132 September 9, 2020. 135 November 1, 2020. 136 April 18, 2021. 139

Notes on Contributors Tamara Brooks has been in education for 25 years. She has taught middle school and high school at various schools ranging from rural to inner city and now internationally. She loves her job! She currently teaches at The American School of Belo Horizonte and Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor is a U.S. Fulbright Scholar Ambassador and Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia. She’s authored five books addressing intersections between language education and the literary, visual and performing arts including one book of poems, Imperfect Tense, and her newest book, Enlivening Instruction with Drama and Improv. Supported by grants and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright, and Beckman Award for Professors Who Inspire, her work narrates the heartache and joy of teaching and learning language. She lives in Athens, GA with her husband and two children and their rescue dog, Bagel. Susan Ophelia Cannon is an assistant professor of mathematics education at the University of Georgia. She works and thinks across the boundaries of mathematics and statistics education, qualitative inquiry, and teacher education. She is the mother of two young adults. She also participates in acts of mothering with cats, chickens, tomato plants, blackberries, cucumbers, and unruly textual productions. Carlson H. Coogler is a doctoral candidate in Educational Research at the University of Alabama. She focuses on qualitative methodologies and is especially interested in how we do, learn, and teach research methodologies; transdisciplinary, multimodal and artful inquiry in and outside of the classroom; and qualitative pedagogies that advance more just futures. Kerry F. Crawford is Associate Professor and the Department Head of Political Science at James Madison University. She has written several books, including Wartime Sexual Violence: From Silence to Condemnation of a Weapon of War (2017), Human Security: Theory and Action (with David Andersen-Rodgers, 1st edition 2018, 2nd edition 2023), and The PhD Parenthood Trap: Caught Between Work and

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Family in Academia (with Leah Windsor, 2021). She has also published research in journals and academic blogs, including: Journal of Global Security Studies, PS: Political Science and Politics, Perspectives on Politics, International Studies Perspectives, Gender and Development, Armed Forces & Society, Air and Space Power Journal, Duck of Minerva, openDemocracy, International Affairs Blog (Chatham House), The Monkey Cage (Washington Post), and the United States Institute of Peace. Mandie Bevels Dunn (PhD) currently works as Assistant Professor of English Education at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. Motivated by an interest in teacher well-being, she studies how grieving teachers manage their emotions in the context of reading, writing, and thinking with students. Daniela Gachago is Associate Professor at the Centre for Innovation for Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town. Her current research focuses on academic staff development for designing blended and online learning in higher education, with a particular focus on developing socially just learning and curriculum designs based on co-creation and equity-oriented compassionate design principles. Mo Gachago is in grade 12 at the German International School of Cape Town and busy with final exams. Kelsey Guy is a doctoral candidate in Educational Research at The University of Alabama, and (at the time of publication) is actively working on her dissertation. A former Italian Instructor, she enjoys her work as the Faculty-Led Program Advisor in the UA Education Abroad Office, a role that allows her to be surrounded by one of her favorite things: traveling. An Academic Mother herself, Kelsey’s greatest pride and joy is found in her 1-year-old daughter, who, along with Kelsey’s husband, gave her the strength to write this chapter. Kelly W. Guyotte is Associate Professor of Qualitative Research at The University of Alabama where she also serves as Director of Faculty Development for the College of Education. Always drawing inspiration from her background in the visual arts, her research interests include issues of gender and equity in higher education, artful inquiry practices, STEAM (STEM + art) education, as well as

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qualitative pedagogy and mentoring. She is co-editor of Philosophical Mentoring in Qualitative Research: Collaborating and Inquiring Together (Routledge) and is the mother to two daughters. Jill Hermann-Wilmarth is Professor of Socio-Cultural Studies, with specialization in early grades literacies, in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Educational Studies, with a joint appointment as professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Western Michigan University. She is the co-author of Reading the Rainbow: LGBTQInclusive Literacy Instruction in the Elementary Classroom (2018), which was awarded the Edward B. Fry Book Award from the Literacy Research Association. Tynetta Jenkins is a fourth grade teacher at Episcopal Day School in Augusta, Ga, where she teaches fourth grade math and science. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Biology and a master’s degree in Secondary Education from Augusta University. A. C. Johnson is a first-generation college graduate and mother who currently works as a student affairs administrator and faculty member. As a scholar of higher education, her current research explores Black women’s experiences in higher education and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU s). Overall, she is committed to assisting college students with their academic journeys in all capacities. She has served diverse student populations as a Clinical Assistant professor, an advisor, a program coordinator, and as a mentor, among many other roles. Kate Kedley is Associate Professor at Rowan University (Glassboro, New Jersey). Kate’s research interests are critical literacies, English Education, LGBTQ issues, and social and educational movements in Honduras. Lodi Lipien is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Measurement and Research program at the University of South Florida. She is employed full-time as a Research and Evaluation Manager for a large school district and is the proud mom of a fabulous 17-year-old. Cheryl E. Matias is a full professor in the School of Leadership and Education Science at the University of San Diego. She is an award winning scholar on race, whiteness, and

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racially just teacher education having recently won the American Educational Research Association’s 2020 Mid-Career Award. She is a Motherscholar of 3, including boy-girl twins, an avid runner and yogi, and dances salsa and bachata. Shelly Melchior is Assistant Professor of Secondary Education within the College of Education at the University of West Alabama, Livingston, and an adjunct faculty member within the Department of Educational Research at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. She is interested in the intersections of race, class, cultural capital, graduation rates, and the myth of meritocracy AND all things qualitative research. Caitlin L. Ryan is a professor in the Watson College of Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is the co-author, along with Dr. Jill HermannWilmarth of Western Michigan University, of the book Reading the Rainbow: LGBTQ-Inclusive Literacy Instruction in the Elementary Classroom, which received the Edward B. Fry Book Award from the Literacy Research Association in 2018. Her work has been published in a variety of national and international outlets, and she currently serves as an editor of the Journal of Children’s Literature. Stephanie Anne Shelton is Director of Diversity and an Associate Professor of Qualitative Research at The University of Alabama. She is the 2020 recipient of the AERA Division D Early Career Award in Measurement and Research Methodology, 2021 NCTE LGBTQ+ Advocacy and Leadership Award, 2022 American Library Association’s Choice Book Award, and 2023 Divergent Award for Excellence in Literacy Advocacy. Her scholarship has been featured in a number of journals and funded by the Spencer Foundation, American Educational Research Association, and National Council of Teachers of English. Sara Scott Shields (PhD) is Associate Professor of Art Education at The Florida State University. She currently serves as Chair of the Art Education Department. Dr. Shields has taught at the secondary or college level for 17 years. Her research and curriculum development is focused on the integration of visual journaling, contemporary art, community and personal histories, and how these might work together to create unique opportunities for art educators and students to engage in civically minded and socially just educative encounters.

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Elaine Thurmond is Assistant Professor of Clinical Practice at Mercer University. She works with both undergraduate and graduate level students in Early Childhood, ELAD, Educational Leadership and Field Experiences. She is the mother of three adult children. Her extra time is consumed with community service and nonprofit organizations. Erica Warren graduated with her doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Mercer University. She studied the hidden curriculum of being/becoming a middle school teacher through a Black feminist lens. She is currently Director of Programs for Boys and Girls Clubs of America where she supports innovative program development for Clubs nationwide. She lives in metro Atlanta with her husband and 2 kids. Leah Windsor is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Institute for Intelligent Systems and Department of English at The University of Memphis where she directs the Languages Across Cultures lab which studies language in opaque political environments. Her work in computational linguistics examines the question, “How does what we say reveal who we are?” She is currently PI on an NSF grant studying multimodal communication (#2117009). Her book on gender and bias in family formation with Kerry F. Crawford, The PhD Parenthood Trap, is available with Georgetown University Press. Leah is also a fourth generation farmer. Jennifer ( Jenni) Wolgemuth is an associate professor at the University of South Florida, in the College of Education’s Measurement and Research program. Jenni’s scholarly activity involves reading theory that is often well beyond her ability to follow, usually with super-smart students/friends/colleagues, and then thinking, conducting, writing qualitative inquiry with and through it.

Introduction Kelly W. Guyotte, Stephanie Anne Shelton, Shelly Melchior and Carlson H. Coogler 1

Mothering as Academics: Pasts, Presents, and Futures

Before it was even imagined as a project, this book began as texts between Kelly and Stephanie during the COVID-19 pandemic’s shelter-in-place mandates that were widespread throughout the United States and the world. Kelly messaged to share how utterly overwhelmed being an academic and a mother felt as she lived and worked and mothered in the same place, at the same time, day after day after day. Stephanie gently responded with care and support, even as she shared the degrees to which she felt isolation at home, bleary-eyed with perpetual Zoom meetings that served as a means of mothering students and family from afar, even as she was not a mother. Both academics, Kelly and Stephanie noted the lack of scholarship acknowledging these realities—of mothering in (un)familiar terrains. To the degree that academic mothering in a pandemic was ‘new,’ this was unsurprising; to the degree that the pandemic did not create but rather intensify the challenges of academic mothering, this was a startling omission. What is it like to mother as an academic, through and beyond a life disrupted by a global pandemic? What stories do mothers have to tell? They reached out to Shelly and Carlson, both doctoral research assistants at the time, to design a study that centered academic mothers’ experiences during the pandemic. The research, from which the four of us continue to learn, emphasized the both/and nature of these mothers’ experiences: mothering was both joyful and impossible; work was both a refuge and a burden; family was both energizing and exhausting. Throughout these seeming paradoxes, mothers noted the lack of structural support from higher education, describing the degrees to which they were individually left to fend for themselves. They narrated how they found means of survival, navigating their personal and professional lives when and where neither space nor time was plentiful. Ultimately, we came to the conclusion that these mothers’ experiences ­necessitated redefining mothering in academia, and academia itself. An important aspect of this redefinition was to begin to think in terms of mothering rather than mothers. This shift worked to include not only those who are “mother,” as a noun, but those who are not-mother yet still “mother,” as a verb. Therefore, this book draws on and expands these inclusive understandings of mothering. It is an effort to explore the ways that mothering is experienced in academia, and

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to imagine higher education differently, fabulating new ­possibilities–futures in which academic mothering might be valued and supported in (and by) higher education. Throughout this book, the contributors (re)imagine academic mothering in a variety of ways, for many purposes, and from diverse points of view. In so doing, they provide productively varied perspectives on the identities and practices of both academia and mothering. They represent different races, ethnicities, and genders, operate in diverse disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) spaces, and hold various positions in higher education, from graduate students to full professors. They use graphics, poetry, narratives, and other tools, to push the boundaries of what mothering means, how it matters, and what it might be. They define mothering broadly, encompassing those who are biologically or legally mothers with children; those who are “not-mother” but who nonetheless understand and practice “mother” as more than a status or title; those who do not identify as women; and all those who take on mothering roles in academia and beyond. Some individuals question and challenge motherhood, others embrace it; some long for it, others are uncertain as to if and how they want it; still others are sure that they do not wish motherhood but still embrace mothering. They are mothers, and/or mother, in diverse ways and with varying perspectives. In so doing, they critique the systemic failures of academia in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, fabulating new possibilities for mothering in higher education. In so doing, they mother compelling futures. 2

Mothering and the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 began as something removed. As something happening to other people and occurring in other places. That is, until the day the news entered our hospitals, our schools, our colleges and universities, and, ultimately, our homes. Pre-pandemic, women occupied approximately 56.2 percent of the labor force, and women with children under the age of 18 represented 71.2 percent of this number (U.S. Department of Labor, 2021). From February 2020, when the nation began a slow shutdown, until February 2021, a net 2.4 million women left the workforce, a drop of 3.1 percent (Kochhar & Bennett, 2021). The majority of these job losses belong to Women of Color, with Black and Hispanic women accounting for 46 percent of the total decrease in women’s labor (Kochhar & Bennett, 2021). As women are typically those who mother, these findings have substantial implications for what mothering means in higher education. Labor. A word rife with multiple meanings, particularly to mothers and mothering academics. It is defined as “the expenditure of physical or mental

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effort especially when difficult or compulsory,” yet moves from noun to verb, from process to practice, “to exert one’s powers of body or mind especially with painful or strenuous work”—“to move with great effort”—“to suffer from some disadvantage or stress”—“to be in the labor of giving birth” (Merriam-Webster, 2021). An October 2020 Brookings Institute report cited findings that showed working mothers endured disproportionate levels of childcare responsibilities (Bateman & Ross, 2020), and in April 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that 1.5 million mothers of school-aged children were still missing from the workforce, instead laboring as mothers in their homes (Riley & Stamm, 2021). In fact, conducting an online search with the keywords ‘working mothers pandemic’ reveals pages upon pages of news stories, blog posts, research, and government reports, all focused on the difficulties faced by working (and recently out-of-work) mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Labor. Academic mothers’ labor over the pandemic has been strenuous, effortful, and, for some, full of disadvantage, stress, and suffering. The challenges that were already ever-present for mothers and those who mother were amplified during the pandemic. As shelter-in-place directives permeated the national landscape, issues of childcare, for example, became paramount. Wynn (2021) found that “Americans missed more work than ever before due to child care problems in 2020, and the burden was shouldered almost exclusively by women” (p. 1). Thus, mothers “accounted for 84 percent of all workers who missed work in the average month last year due to child care issues—a five year high” (p. 1). During this time, the home was no longer just a communal space for sharing, loving, and living, but also a workspace. It was filled with children receiving instruction online; mothers, including those in academia, teaching and meeting online; and partners adapting to working virtually—all while dinner needed to be prepared, laundry done, bills paid, fears allayed, deadlines met, research delivered, and pedagogies, curricula, and content altered to meet the needs of increasingly anxious students by increasingly anxious mothers/academics. Additionally, those who mother labored to provide these efforts through virtual screens, rather than through face-to-face support. These second-shift responsibilities (Hochschild, 2012)—in which women and mothers do the majority of the carrying, the lifting, the list-keeping, the hand-holding, while still expected to perform, do, be, represent all that they were outside of the home— were now an amalgam of multiple roles within a confined space (their home). The home, once a place of refuge, was now one of competing roles and responsibilities. This collision exacerbated the “second shift,” a term reflecting the continuation of women’s work day to household labor, as they shift from professional to personal responsibilities. Hermann et al. (2021) found that “Women still hold an inequitable share of the second shift. Even when participants reported sharing

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second shift activities relatively equally, they still engaged in the often invisible mental labor of managing the second-shift” (p. 31). The labor of mothering is invisible labor but labor unquestionably felt. It is invisible because it is performed in a way that it is taken for granted by all except those doing the work. In academic spaces already rife with inequities and gender disparities, the race for acceptance, admittance, respect, and survival “has changed not only how we (women) approach our work but also how we let work infiltrate our most intimate spaces. This, like many forms of inequality, has hit women especially hard” (Vialette, 2020, para. 15). Indeed, it has also hit all mothers hard. While much of the research and data seems to center cisgender and heterosexual mothers, Leventry (2020) explained that these conversations about the challenges of mothering during the pandemic ought to be more inclusive. Advocating for the inclusion of trans and non-­ binary mothers, Leventry called for a reframing of these discussions, asserting: I know it’s hard—I live it every day. I need articles that acknowledge my existence. I need language to be more inclusive because it would be nice to feel a sense of camaraderie. Misery loves company, and we are at the threshold of hell. (para. 9) The stories of all those who mothered during the pandemic deserve to be heard, including queer and otherwise marginalized mothers. Including all who mother. Feeling sometimes like hell, the work of mothering continued during the pandemic without regard to any shift; instead, it embodied an ongoing existence replete with home/work/life. This conflation of professional, personal, and private often comes at a cost: a “motherhood penalty” (Baker, 2010; Budig & England, 2001; Vomvoridi-Ivanovic & Ward, 2021). Within higher education specifically, the academic mother is positioned as the anchor in the academic race for publications, rank, salary, tenure, job security, and respect. Since the pandemic began, there has been a notable decrease in the number of articles submitted to research publications by women, even as men “submitting up to 50 percent more than they usually would” (Kitchener, 2020, p. 1). In addition, a survey of over 20,000 PhD holders found that “mothers suffered a 33 percent larger drop in research hours compared with fathers” (Langin, 2021, p. 1). To be sure, COVID-19 hit us all—mothers, othermothers, academic mothers, mothering academics—so that the motherhood penalty discussed in the literature started to feel, more broadly, like a mothering penalty. The labor experienced by those engaged in academic mothering practices during the pandemic was not entirely unlike pre-pandemic labor; however, the ongoingness, the persistence,

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the profound effects and affects of this labor, was unlike anything experienced before. The labors of mothering took on new practices, new significance, while the stakes only increased. 3

About the Book

Inspired by the stories and livings of the pandemic, this is a book about, for, and with those who are different embodiments of academic mothering. We, the four co-editors, came together during the COVID-19 pandemic to envision a research study about how academic mothers were navigating the challenges of shifting and conflating roles of work and home (and of working and mothering while at home) while taking on unprecedented responsibilities during unprecedented times. Two of us identify as biological mothers—Kelly and Shelly—with Kelly having two young children living at home with her during the pandemic and Shelly, who has five adult children, one in her freshman year and one in her senior year of college during the pandemic. Two of us, Carlson and Stephanie, do not identify as mothers, though we both unquestionably engage in acts of mothering within and beyond our families. With her two children at home during a particularly stressful week during the pandemic, Kelly texted Stephanie and told her that she needed to do this work. Needed it. She needed to know she was not alone, that living the pandemic as an academic mother was more challenging than she wanted to admit. She needed to connect with other academic mothers and hear their stories. She needed a scholarly community exploring the notion of academic mothering. She needed this topic to be visible. This need was the genesis of a research study as well as this book. Thus, we four came together to conduct a qualitative interview study with over 50 academic mothers across the United States. As we spoke to these women via Zoom, we found ourselves wondering together about the future of academia, speculating on what might come from the COVID-19 pandemic and what, if any, impact it might have on academic mothering moving forward. While our interview study sought to understand these mothers’ experiences, this edited collection invited academics invested in some aspect of mothering to reflect on their pasts, to consider our presents, and to shift our collective gazes to the not-yet, to futures-to-come. To speculate, to fabulate. Together, we all pondered: How might we envision a kinder and more equitable future for mothers in academe? How can we push against lingering patriarchal norms and create different paths forward for academic mothers/mothering? How can we (creatively) story the futures of academic mothering?

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Through their myriad positionalities, the chapter authors come together to speculate on varied paths forward, on what those differences produce, and on the ethical imperatives entangled within such shifts in practices. We asked the authors to consider several questions as they crafted their chapters. These questions were intended to serve as openings toward their speculative inquiries, and included: – How has/will the COVID-19 pandemic come to matter to current and future academic mothers/mothering? – What new academic worlds might be envisioned that cultivate care and support for future (and present) academic mothering? – What existing patriarchal structures, policies, and other impediments need to be re- or un-thought in order to world new futures? – How do academic kin, and the process of making kin (Haraway, 2016), come to matter in these fabulations? – Why/how does academic mothering matter, and how might it be cultivated? – How can we artfully speculate about and present future academic worlds and worldmaking? – What are the ethical considerations that affect academic mothers/mothering both now and in the future? While these questions provided a starting point for many of the academics who contributed to this book, you will see great diversity in how these topics are taken up in the chapters. Drawing from a feminist perspective, we invited creativity with a goal of queering—of disrupting and even rejecting—the norms of traditional academic writing and pushing the boundaries of patriarchy. Thus, we invited poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, image and text. The contributors embraced this openness and delivered an evocative collection of works that, we believe, will provoke our readers to think about how we all might move forward with intentionality as we rethink and even unthink the futures of academic mothering. 4

Feminist Fabulations

The questions that we posed as editors prompted our contributors to think and write with their experiences and knowledges as mothers and as mothering. This book, therefore, takes a feminist approach, in that the mothers both witness and reconstruct their lived experiences. That is, they occupy the role of narrators—telling and retelling their stories—and of characters, embedded in systems of oppression and circumstances that constrain them (Kim, 2016;

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Tamboukou et al., 2013; Woodiwiss et al., 2017). We argue that, in this feminist process of valuing and (re)telling the stories of mothers, they also occupy the speculative or the fabulative. In their stories, they reworld the world (see Haraway, 2016). Thus, this book features the complex orchestrations that we call “mothering:” the navigations of roles, histories, visions, hopes, labors, and joys, whereby we are narrator and character simultaneously, whereby we help that which is-not-quite-yet become what it is becoming. Our contributors tell many such mothering tales, and they cover a range of topics and arguments about mothering, the academy, and mothering in the academy. We encourage the reader to encounter this book as many conversations. But, also, as many conversations with the same purpose: to write about what is, and in doing so, to write what can be. To tell how it is that academic mothering is experienced now, and what is therefore possible to envision differently for the present/ future of academia mothering. Our contributors employed various genres, modes, and processes. There are many similarities and divergences across their individual experiences, but we were drawn again and again to one: to the wisdom at the core of speculative feminism. Namely, that if we are to grow a new world, we must labor in the compost, in this compost (Haraway, 2016; Truman, 2019). Fabulative feminism is not escapism. The present is required to birth the new: the difficulties and joys of remembering the past. It’s a messy way to grow—mixing pain and desire, grief and peace, knowledge and mystery—but it is the way so many have chosen, and we have not asked them to tell a different story. They are all part of this, and it is an old and new story at once. We unearth, we till, we seed, we water, we wait. There may still be a long way to go—it takes time for roots to take hold and for green to struggle up through soil and around rock to open first leaves into the sun. But, something new will come from this soil, if and as we plant. For years, mothers have worked the mud of this and future worlds, with story and spade. While we weed the seeded rows, we trust the markers. Here are carrots. Here are potatoes. Here are memories and visions, by which we will mother what might be(come). Here is feminism at work; this is fabulation. At its heart, feminist fabulation is an “investment in becoming-with-context, situated knowledges, and speculative alter-worlding” (Åsberg et al., 2015, p. 164, original emphasis). By fabulation, we mean the sort of makings, tellings, and hopings that are commonly associated with creativity, imagination, and the speculative—that “move from mirroring into making, illuminating what can be created rather than what is ‘there’” (Camargo-Borges, 2018, p. 94; see also Barr, 1987). Inspired by feminist theorist Donna Haraway (2016) who identifies the speculative with storytelling in general and science-fiction specifically, Truman (2019) explains that speculative

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fabulation “defamiliarizes, queers perception, and disrupts habitual ways of knowing” (p. 31). However, it is important to note that the speculative and fabulative are not the same thing as fiction, though it is commonly associated with fiction (see Le Guin, 2004; Le Guin & Naimon, 2018). Fabulation is not even necessarily narrative. Rather, it surpasses genres and mode (Truman, 2019). It is present in theorizing (Goodeve, 2000); in methodology (Springgay & Truman, 2017; Truman & Springgay, 2016); and, in feminist art-making and activism in general (Åsberg et al., 2015). If a form of ‘fiction’, speculative fabulation is more like what is called a “novel fiction:” an approach aimed not at either faithfully mimicking reality nor ignoring it, but rather at using the raw materials of the world to build it differently (Benjamin, 2016). It is the ‘fiction’, that is, of “staying with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016), not the illusion of leaving it behind. We, thus, draw inspiration from Saidiya Hartman (2008, 2019), who employs “critical fabulation” (2008, p. 11), a combination of archival research and imagination. In this way, she allows readers to confront an alternative history book of Black, queer, radical wom*n (Hartman, 2019). Fabulation, then, empowers us (all) to envision (and create) an alternative feminist future. Whatever their tools, our contributors are gardeners of the world, refashioning time and space with time and space, til spadeful after spadeful, the geographies of power are leveled. Here, they are at work, in these histories and hopes for regenerating the world. Here are tales of mothers, told by mothers, about how it was that they navigated their roles. Here are tales of mothering, told by those who are not mothers but imagine mothering expansively. Here are tales of mothers about othermothers. Here are tales of how it is that ‘there’ becomes ‘here’; how ‘now’ becomes ‘soon.’ How many mothers, digging in a great deal of shit, (re)make the world. 5

The Book’s Organization: From Roots to Blooms

Drawing on these concepts of digging, growing, (re)making, and (re)imagining, this book’s chapters are divided into three major concepts related to academic mothering: mothering as practice, mothering in precarity, and mothering as relational. To begin each chapter, we are honored to include artwork by academic mother Sara Scott Shields who created-with these three concepts, using mixed media to evocatively story the messy, impossible, exhilarating, and vibrancy of mothering experiences. We hope you will pause with each of these images and consider what feelings and futures they evoke for you. We also nudge you to explore how the images dialogue with the chapters. Now, we turn our attention to speak further about these sections, shedding light on the chapters therein.

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5.1 Mothering as Practice Practice is grounded in the dark, moist, life-giving soil of action. Authors in this section emphasize their efforts–for themselves, their families, and to academia. Their efforts to be active, and responsive, as they mother during and beyond a pandemic, struggling for purchase and gripping the soil, pushing through the many layers of rot and dirt to find sunlight. The section begins with Carlson H. Coogler’s “Mothering in the Dirt: ­Kenning Self and Kin” that taps into this section’s root system metaphor in the effort to, through literal plant growing and artistic depictions, “grow” a sense of mothering that feels authentic and meaningful. Coogler explores the tensions of mothering through both biological pulls and academic pushes, (re)envisioning mothering “off the beaten path.” Next, Stephanie Anne Shelton and Tamara Brooks’ “The Other Mothers: No, Not the Ugly Stepmothers or the Fairy Godmothers…The Teacher Mothers” continues to wrestle with these pulls and pushes as their fairy tale expands mothering beyond biology in an effort to confront the implications of COVID’s invisible attack on their magical kingdom, while shifting their attention to collective mothering slaying the monster of patriarchy. Then, we turn to Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor who offers poetic reflections on motherhood, academia, and the pandemic through considerations of the past and hopeful glances into the future in “Sources of Hope into, through, & beyond Academic Mothering during the Pandemic.” C ­ ahnmann-Taylor’s poetic essay served as an opportunity for her to navigate various, and very real, tensions that stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we conclude this section with Kate Kedley’s “A Graphic Representation of Parenting in the Pandemic: Borders, Binaries, and Boundaries.” A chapter rooted in visual depictions of a family’s navigation of the pandemic, Kedley’s explores how the tendrils of overlapping responsibilities, academia, parenting, queerness, and immigration status, shape a family’s survival and connections. 5.2 Mothering and Precarity Continuing this concept of messy, sometimes painful growth, the second section focuses on uncertainty. Anyone who has planted a garden knows the trepidation of waiting for the shoots to unfurl from their seeds and tentatively poke their heads above the soil; they know also that the precarity does not end here, but that mothering shifts to protect the soft, new green stems from pests, burning sun, and other threats. The benefit to these efforts is to coax and celebrate new life, but uncertainty laces throughout. This section’s chapters emphasize that notion of uncertainty being linked to frustration, fear, and hopeful celebration. Here, we begin with “Rejecting Good Mother: Becoming Otherwise in ­Precarity,” by Tynetta Jenkins, Erica Warren, Susan O. Cannon, and Elaine

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Thurmond, who explore the precarity and interwoven-ness of motherhood, academia, uncertainty, and hope. Through exchanging letters with one another, the authors consider their legibility in the academy as they endeavor to create an intersectional assemblage of academic mothers. Considering her own legibility, A.C. Johnson’s “‘I’m Not Your Superwoman:’ An Exploration of the Strong Black Woman Trope and How it Affected My Doctoral Journey” offers vulnerable reflection on her experiences as mother—including mothering her own mother—while confronting the Strong Black Woman trope that shaped her identity and experiences throughout the pandemic. Next, Kelsey H. Guy’s “The Miscarrying Mother.” Guy’s chapter is structured as a self-interview that works through the uncertainties and emotions of mothering and motherhood, alongside academia’s disinterest toward her heartbreak. Along the lines of institutions, the section concludes with a chapter entitled “Compelled to Care: Academic Work in a Mother-fucking Dystopian Hellscape” by Mandie Bevels Dunn, Jennifer R. Wolgemuth, and Lodi Lipien. They offer the story of a dystopic kinship worldbuilding where care is a commodity. Here, the authors engage with a future in which care collapses into a neoliberal institutional structure, fabulating the terrifying promises of what can go wrong. 5.3 Mothering as Relational The entire point of gardening is, arguably, the plants finally emerging together from the soil to fill their fields and beds. The greenery provides a stark contrast to the dark, dank dirt, and those small leaves and stems inspire hope for what the plants will be, even as their transformative greenery and color are always relational to the soil to which they are connected. In this final section, we begin with Kelly W. Guyotte’s “Gifts and Grief: Poetic Ruminations on Academic Mothering During the COVID-19 Pandemic (and Beyond).” In this chapter, Guyotte uses poetry to work through both the grief and the unexpected gifts that accompanied her experiences as a mother sheltered-in-place with her two children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, the chapter “Queer Mother/Scholars” by Jill Hermann-Wilmarth and Caitlin L. Ryan is written as a dialogic exploration of how queer mothering might queer the academy and its relationship to mothering. The authors look to past, present, and future to speculate how they (and we) can move forward in a more humanizing and more relational way. Also exploring relationships, Daniela and Mo Gachago’s “Mothering and Working Across Difference: Intergenerational Conversations on Living with Uncertainty” is a co-written chapter by mother and son that explores the challenges of transnational familyhood when cultures abruptly collide. The Gachagos work through tensions related to the complexities of raising/being a cross culture kid and mothering.

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We conclude this section with Shelly Melchior’s “And These Things are Good,” which through narrative and poetic refrain, centers both significant uncertainty and eternal hope that surrounds the support of a loved one with dementia. A student, mother, daughter, wife, and teacher, Melchior elevates the intersections and tensions between all these roles and relationships as she explores what it means to practice mothering across time and space. 5.4 Kinder Futures The beautiful words of Cheryl E. Matias begin the book, helping us to find strength through our pain, helping us to focus on love through our motherscholaring. To conclude, Kerry Crawford and Leah Cathryn Windsor’s epilogue takes up the question How might we envision a kinder and more equitable future for mothers in academia? Drawing on their own work on/as academic mothers, these authors offer a call to action. They concisely articulate the issues and challenges in higher education and present concrete next steps that institutions can implement to better support academic mothering through kindness and equity. 6 Coda Reader, we imagine you are reading this book because the topic has some resonance with you. Perhaps you are an academic, perhaps even an academic mother. Perhaps you dream of becoming a mother, or perhaps you are forever content as an othermother. Perhaps you are interested in stories, poetry, artfulness, and unconventional inquiries. Perhaps you are a feminist, or you consider yourself an ally to/with mothers in your academic workplace or simply in life. Regardless of what brought you to this work, we invite you into this messy, impossible, exhilarating, vibrant growth. We invite you into the tensions, the uncertainties, the difficulties and the pain. We invite you into the unimaginable love and the responsibilities and the care. The mothers you will meet in the chapters reveal rawness and vulnerability in their tellings, and they, too, have invited us into their lives. Please join us with gratitude so that we might garden together, cultivating something hopeful for the futures of academia: an academic mothering that makes something powerful and new. References Åsberg, C., Thiele, K., & Van der Tuin, I. (2015). Speculative before the turn: Reintro­ ducing feminist materialist performativity. Cultural Studies Review, 21(2), 145–172. https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v21i2.4324

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Baker, M. (2010). Motherhood, employment, and the ‘child penalty.’ Women’s Studies International Forum, 33, 215–224. Barr, M. (1987). Feminist fabulation; or, playing with patriarchy vs. the masculinization of metafiction. Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 14(2), 187–191. https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.1987.9978697 Bateman, N., & Ross, M. (2020). Why has COVID-19 been especially harmful for working women? Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/essay/why-hascovid-19-been-especially-harmful-for-working-women/ Benjamin, R. (2016). Racial fictions, biological facts: Expanding the sociological imagination through speculative methods. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 2(2), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v2i2.28798 Budig, M., & England, P. (2001). The wage penalty for motherhood. American Sociological Review, 66, 204–225. Camargo-Borges, C. (2018). Creativity and imagination: Research as world making! In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 88–100). Guildford Press. Goodeve, T. N. (2000). How like a leaf: An interview with Donna Haraway. Routledge. Greene, M. (2000). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. John Wiley & Sons. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373780 Hartman, S. (2008). Venus in two acts. Small Axe, 12(2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1215/-12-2-1 Hartman, S. (2019). Wayward lives, beautiful experiments: Intimate histories of riotous Black girls, troublesome women, and queer radicals. WW Norton & Company. Hermann, M., Neale-McFall, C., & Man, J. (2021). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on working mothers: A phenomenological study. World Journal of Education and Humanities, 3(2), 15–35. https://doi.org/10.22158/wjeh.v3n2p15 Hochschild, A. (2012). The second shift: Working families and the revolution at home. Penguin Books. Kim, J.-H. (2016). Understanding narrative inquiry: The crafting and analysis of stories as research. Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071802861 Kitchener, C. (2020). Women academics seem to be submitting few papers during coronavirus. ‘Never seen anything like it,’ says one editor. Lily. https://www.thelily.com/women-academics-seem-to-be-submitting-fewer-papersduring-coronavirus-never-seen-anything-like-it-says-one-editor/ Kochhar, R., & Bennett, J. (2021). U.S. labor market inches back from the COVID-19 shock, but recovery is far from complete. Pew Research Center. Langin, K. (2021, February 9). Pandemic hit academic mothers especially hard, new data confirm. Science. https://www.science.org/content/article/pandemic-hit-academicmothers-especially-hard-new-data-confirm

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Le Guin, U. K. (2004). The wave in the mind: Talks and essays on the writer, the reader, and the imagination. Shambhala Publications. Le Guin, U. K., & Naimon, D. (2018). Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on writing. Tin House Books. Leventry, A. (2020, November 6). The pandemic is impacting trans & non-binary parents too, so include us in the conversations. ScaryMommy. https://www.scarymommy.com/pandemic-impacting-transgender-parents-too/ Merriam-Webster. (2021). Labor. Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/labor N.A. (2021). Data and statistics: Women’s Bureau. U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data Riley, K., & Stamm, S. (2021). Nearly 1.5 million mothers are still missing from the workforce. Wall Street Journal (Online). https://www.wsj.com/articles/nearly-1-5million-mothers-are-still-missing-from-the-workforce-11619472229 Springgay, S., & Truman, S. E. (2017). On the need for methods beyond proceduralism: Speculative middles, (in)tensions, and response-ability in research. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(3), 203–214. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800417704464 Tamboukou, M., Andrews, M., & Squires, C. (2013). Introduction: What is narrative research? In M. Andrews, C. Squire, & M. Tamboukou (Eds.), Doing narrative research (2nd ed., pp. 1–26). Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526402271 Truman, S. E. (2019). SF! Haraway’s situated feminisms and speculative fabulations in English class. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 38(1), 31–42. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11217-018-9632-5 Truman, S. E., & Springgay, S. (2016). Propositions for walking research. In P. Bernard, L. Mackinley, & K. Powell (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook for intercultural arts (pp. 259–267). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315693699 Vialette, A. (2020, August 18). Colleges’ sexist scandal. The Chronicle of Higher Educa­ tion. https://www.chronicle.com/article/colleges-sexist-scandal Vomvoridi-Ivanovic, E., & Ward, J. K. (2021). Academic motherhood in mathematics teacher education during COVID-19: Breaking the silence and shifting the discourse. REDIMAT—Journal of Research in Mathematics Education, 10(1), 41–61. https://doi.org/ 10.17583/redimat.2021.6436 Woodiwiss, J., Smith, K., & Lockwood, K. (2017). Introduction: Doing feminist narrative research. In J. Woodiwiss, K. Smith, & K. Lockwood (Eds.), Feminist narrative research: Opportunities and challenges (pp. 1–10). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48568-7 Wynn, M. (2021, January 29). Child care problems skyrocketed under COVID. Women paid the Price. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/ 2021/01/29/coronavirus-childcare-burden-fell-womens-shoulders/4279673001/

PART 1 Mothering as Practice

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Chapter 1

Mothering in the Dirt Kenning Self and Kin

Carlson H. Coogler Abstract What does it mean, and what does it do, to mother when you are not a mother? This chapter is an artful, speculative, and practical exploration of these questions. Reflecting on what becomes visible and doable when mothering happens “off the beaten path,” I re-define and re-envision mothering as I grow a clipping from my mother’s hydrangea. Turning to poetry and sketching, I tell together past, present and future. I pull together stories and bodies; languages and possibilities; the personal and the academic; expectations and desires. I think with Haraway and others about mothering, about kinning and responsibility. I cultivate possibilities, cleaving my experiences and desires, and settle it all in sun and water. I mother (as it grew); I grow (as it mothered), following roots/routes. I ken the future by caring for a little piece of the world and myself here and now—where and who I am.

Keywords kin – kinning – kenning – responsibility – poetic inquiry – visual inquiry

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Mothering in the Dirt: Kenning Self and Kin

I am not a mother; yet, I feel the desire to mother. To care for, to kin with, an-other. What does it mean to mother when you are not a mother? How do you mother where, and who, you are? Donna Haraway’s (2016) description of “cultivating response-ability” (p. 130) was one of the many beginnings of this inquiry. She writes, “to venture off the beaten path to meet unexpected, non-natal kin, and to strike up conversations…to propose together something unanticipated, to take up the unasked-for

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Figure 1.1 Roots from the cut (August 11, 2021 [sketch])

obligations of having met. This is what I have called cultivating response-­ ability” (p. 130, emphasis added). Although this experience of “ventur[ing] off the beaten path” can be read as a definition for “cultivating response-ability,” I read it also as a proposition. I interpret: it is important to not just live ‘beside’ other species, but to find ways to walk-with them—to “cultivat[e]” the sort of relationships that make, if not “natal kin,” still “kin” all the same. What does it look like, feel like, and do, to mother, wherever and whoever you are—especially when to do so is to mother, to kin, “off the beaten path?” Or, for me, What does it look like, feel like, and do, to mother my non-natal kin? And, to do so in the Academy?

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In what follows, I mix story, poetry, and visual art, to find a way to purposefully walk my path as a ‘non-mother’ mothering self and an-other. This chapter is a speculation, a fabulation; in other words, it is a way to illuminate and pursue ‘new’ possibilities for living well—particularly, in this case, for mothering. In so doing, I am not seeking to critique or destroy ‘old’ ways. I play games with words, histories, and futures, to craft for myself a way to mother in the here/ now and to-be (Haraway, 2016; Koro et al., 2021). The non-natal kin of focus is a hydrangea plant, cut from one of my mother’s bushes in summer 2021. It is growing now on my porch in the early spring light. I have attended to its growth in many ways—practical, artful, and reflective. I’ve watered it, angled it carefully into the sun, shielded baby roots from frost. In this process, I have felt a great deal: excitement, worry, surprise, loss, wonder. I have also found myself learning a lot, though it is hard to say what it is I have learned; like my hydrangea, I’m still in the growing stage. In this chapter, I offer the growing (cuts and all) as I’ve practiced-, made-, and thought-with this plant, this experience, my questions, and ideas of ‘mothering,’ ‘kinning,’ and their various offshoots. With mother, to mother, motherhood, kin, kinning, ken, kenning, akin, and kind. Haraway (2016) wrote that “the word kin is too important to let the critics have it, and family cannot do the work of kin and its routes/roots to kind, with all the multivalences of that term” (p. 216). What follows, therefore, are the routes/ roots of this pursuit. I call them both root and route, meaning both. They are roots in the sense of a plant’s structure—something that absorbs nutrients, and grounds, making growth possible. They are also routes in the sense of paths. As roots, they are still growing. As routes, they are still being walked.

…

I think of these as I feel them continuous (to the touch), voracious, connecting and diverging, dying and living.1 I suspect that this – writing in the middle – is to say what I can’t, but sense: the quiet assembly of centimeter by centimeter, stem departing into tiny leaf, new unfurling into green. 2

A Route/Root Called Routes/Roots

June 2021. I broke off a few stems from one of my mother’s hydrangeas so that I could coax roots from them. I liked the symbolism of it, especially because she

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Figure 1.2 New growing from old (September 10, 2021 [sketch])

loves hydrangeas. I submerged the cut in water in a cobalt blue glass, and sat them on the windowsill, and waited. July 2021. One by one the leaves shriveled, and it all turned brown-grey. I consulted with the stem but found what I expected: no roots. I’m embarrassed and a little frustrated. The hydrangea matters here, matters because it is hers. I have a wonderful mother, and mothering for me—wherever and whoever I am—will always be beautifully tied up with her, with how she has cared for me. So, I’m taking my knife back behind the house and trying again. August 2021. One of the new hydrangea cuttings stayed green. I lifted it out of the water and saw roots reaching out. I planted this one.

…

August 2021. Off the grey side of a rock I pulled succulents, and placed them care-

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fully in a bag to carry home. They already have roots, but it remains to be seen if they can survive the separation—the trauma of relocation. I think of my hydrangea and wonder: is this mothering? To uproot, and replant? To cut a-part so it can grow in new soil, water and sun? 3

A Route/Root Called Making (a Cutting)

This method—of slicing off a piece of a plant and sitting it in water and sunlight until roots grow, until a part of the old plant becomes capable of flourishing on its own—is called “making a cutting.” As a term, “making a cutting” sounds oxymoronic, because cutting, as a mechanism, sounds like a counter-intuitive way to initiate growth. After all, cutting is much more closely associated with reduction—with cutting down or apart, with splicing, with dividing. To multiply is therefore a strange request to make of division—but division nonetheless often complies. Acorns separate from trees. Roots crack the shells of seeds and sprout from a part of the stem that was once three feet in the air. In many species, humans included, the two sex cells (the egg and sperm) each carry a cutting (half) of the parent’s DNA. This is so that when these two halves join, they form a whole. That whole is both historical and entirely new: it is a combination of old genetic material that now exists, for the first time, this way. Newness is cut from the bodies of the old.

…

I gathered with my knife a choreography / of cleavings, cuttings (: a small shoot / or branch bearing / leaf-buds cut / off a plant, and used for propagation) / out from the break came / length after length, words / reaching out, like fellowship, like poetry.2 4

A Root/Route Called Cleaving

From the cutting that lived, I learned that growing requires kinning-with the past. With history. The self-becoming—even when making new roots—begins

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Figure 1.3 Leaves dying, leaves growing (Hydrangea, October 23, 2021 [sketch])

‘for the first time again.’ (Child becoming mother, who was mothered, and who was mothered…) Yet, growing is also a form of kinning-with the future, present meeting possibility, horizon to universe. The first break, the first cut, becomes many, (re)making the world (Barad, 2007, 2014). The cut is replicated again and again on many scales, as kin and self meet at the break. Cells divide to multiply, making a network of kin. A network of cracks, chasms. Of cleavings. I still remember sitting in a poetry class in college and talking about Emily Dickinson’s (1924) poem, “I felt a cleavage in my mind.” Someone pointed out how ‘cleave’ means both to break apart and hold together. Cleave, as a word, holds these two opposites together: lysis and synthesis, division and integration. At the cut, the self becomes because it is at the break that the past, present and future cleave.

…

I. With my mother, I make plans to carry the hydrangea

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til(l) turned soil holds warmth enough for it to grow, then to turn it over to her hands, where it (and I) come from. II. My grandmother grows kin, too. My mom tells me how: by bending stem to earth with stone, meeting breath to breath, the living giving life. She cuts only after roots touch down on familiar soil. III. She is in my veins, and so I have grown. She is in my veins, and so I grow. She is in my veins, and so I will grow and grow and grow. 5

A Root/Route Called Histories

Cleaving (that is, breaking-forming) is a strength of poetry. Gurevitch (2000), for instance, says that “to write poetry or poetic writing means to engage in the break of language. A beginning not out of nowhere but rather out of the end” (p. 6; see also Freeman, 2017, p. 73). Each break, therefore, makes new things sayable, thinkable, imaginable. Each break is productive precisely because it tells you to make sense by reaching back and forwards. As an English teacher, I eagerly pointed out how line breaks thereby multiply meaning. Because of that break, I’d explain, we can read this as its own line and as part of the larger whole. Because of that break, this somehow means this and that, both, at once. It means more than it would have if the line had remained whole. These arguments are not new. Ambiguity and the multiplicity of meaning are familiar benefits of poetry (Faulkner, 2019). And, in new materialist circles,

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Figure 1.4 The new continues to grow (November 12, 2021 [sketch])

the cut is associated with the forming together-apart of the assemblage (Barad, 2007, 2014). The point I am making here, though, is that this familiar capacity— for multiplying meaning, for cultivating more possibilities, from a cut—means that there is no such thing as an origin from “nowhere” (Gurevitch, 2000, p. 6). The break is productive—is a place where roots can grow—precisely because all ‘other’ must grow from what is, from a breaking in/of/with what is. The break is productive because it asks us to make sense of the self as an ‘individual’ line, and as a part of what (/who) has come before and what (/who) will come after. Whether we are using line breaks (literally), we are always making them as academics (figuratively). After all, what is inquiry but a name for learning how to do, and then doing, practices of cleaving? Of breaking and holding-together,

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selectively, the world? I think about Mary Shelly (1818/2012) writing of ­Frankenstein, “I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper” (p. 351). To do academic work is mothering work. But, as the titular character of Shelly’s novel demonstrates, to mother is not the same thing as to birth. How do we mother the accounts of the world that we birth? There are many ways, of course, but I think that our “response-ability” is not in if we cut, but in how, why, for whom, and so on. This begins in knowing that as we read and create theory and methodology, revise research questions, analyze data, select questions to include in an interview protocol, and so on, we are always making and making-with partial accounts of the world (Flint, 2020; Shelton & Flint, 2019).

…

The world and its womb swell with kin kinning kin— no, wait, I think you (mis)heard, I meant the other, or, well, both. If kinning means to make-kin, then kenning is one way: unfolding at the hinges, across gaps the way lines skate in transcripts carving in ice as veins the cut-curves of them, and us. Maybe all stories were once the raw more remembered by the cut. Maybe all words were once kennings for bodies and practices and becomings. Mother, for instance. Say it slowly, and your tongue touches creases: Care-taker. World-bearer. Kin-crafter. Cut-maker. Mo - ther. 6

A Root/Route Called Ken (Verb)

Haraway (2016) describes kin as “a wild category that all sorts of people do their best to domesticate3” (p. 2). The Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) first definition of kin contains the familiar meanings of kin—e.g., “family, race,

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Figure 1.5 Growing exceedingly and slowly (they are not opposites, December 3, 2021 [sketch])

blood-relations” (“kin, n.1”, n.d.). But, “kin, n.2” provides rather different definitions: “a crack, chink, or slit; esp. (a) a chasm or fissure in the earth; (b) a chap or crack in the skin,” and a verb form derivative, “to chap or crack.” Kin, therefore, means both the people you are connected with and also a separation or to separate. With a simple divergence, a quick switch of a letter—from “kin” to “ken”— yields an obsolete verb form that means “to generate, engender, beget; to conceive, to give birth to” (OED, “ken, n.1,” n.d.). In Scotland, ken also means “to know,” “be acquainted with (a person or thing)” and “to understand or perceive (an idea of situation)” (Dictionary.com, n.d.) It means, at once, to “see,” to “recognize” and

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to “know” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). I can’t help but think these together—“kin” and “ken”—given (a) how their definitions intertwine, and that (b) when spoken aloud (when heard aloud in a poem), you won’t be able to tell them apart. This is true, also, for kinning and kenning. Kinning, to make kin, is not technically a word (according to the OED), though Haraway (2016) uses it, and I think it is a beautiful and important word—a way to underscore that kin are made. Kinning, that is, is a possibility-word, a productive-word, a word that forecasts futures. Besides, kinning also sounds exactly like “kenning.” Kenning has a lot of meanings, both ‘current’ and ‘obsolete.’ Among others, it means a “the distance that bounds the range of ordinary vision,” “knowledge, cognizance; recognition,” and “a recognizable portion;” in compound— “kenning-glass” and “kenning-place”—it means “a spyglass, a small telescope” and “a place prominently in sight” (OED, “kenning, n.2,” n.d.). Kenning also pulls me back to poetry because I first learned it within that context. The sixth definition OED explains that kenning is “one of the periphrastic expressions used instead of the simple name of a thing, characteristic of Old Teutonic, and esp. Old Norse, poetry” (“kenning, n.2,” n.d.; see also, Stewart, 1979). (­Periphrasis, by the way, means “a figure of speech in which a meaning is expressed by several words instead of by few or one” [OED, “periphrasis, n.,” n.d.]). To be more specific, a kenning is when a poet takes a word, like ocean, and replaces/expands it in a very specific way: by ‘cutting’ out the original word entirely and leaving in its place a pairing of metaphor and metonymy (Stewart, 1979). The result, a kenning, (e.g., “whale-road” [p. 116]) is “a set of relations involving an absent term” (p. 119). That creates in the hearer a “double vision” that “is dizzying” and “enlightening” (p. 120) simultaneously. Kenning is a fascinating word. It carries both the idea of ‘what you can normally see’ (“the range of ordinary vision”) and also mechanisms for seeing beyond—poetic and literal. Kenning is maybe about seeing the landscape you already can see but seeing it ‘cracked open’ and venturing: seeing the present, past and future, all at once. Standing at the “place prominently in sight,” a place to see it all pulling together, I imagine looking through it. The strange-­ wonderful “telescope” that it is. I imagine how words (and worlds) have changed and might change still. I imagine ‘mother,’ and wonder what does mother(ing) mean, what did it mean, what can it mean? Kenning is the name for a poetic mechanism whereby you take a word, crack it open, and pull-push together embedded or adjacent parts and trajectories. Kenning is the name for, perhaps, observing closely, kinning on purpose, and working—in this moment, this place—for a way of living that is already here (inside the present, seeded by the past) but waiting to be broken open. It works, articulates, and generates, the junctures and divisions—the beaten and

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new paths—whereby what has been becomes what is and what might be, or becomes ‘obsolete.’ World is made into word, and world from word.

…

Kenning is kinning. Kenning is mothering. Kenning is mothering, recognized. Kenning is mothering, beyond “ordinary vision.” Kenning is venturing: one of many ways to mother, to kin, yourself and the world. Matching (15 pts.) Each may be used more than once, or not at all.4 a. Ken b. (A) Kin c. Kenning d. Kinning e. Mother f. Mothering ___ The fringe, a fragment, a trimming; what I had given up on that grew. ___ In botany, cutting akin, cutting apart, the body of the parent stock. ___ (Un)folding meaning into and out of the break. ___ I had no idea, and I wrote this: a chasm a fissure a channel a crack in the skin of the Earth made by roots. ___Be/take be/side be/here—be/get, and be/come. ___ A roundabout way to make a-kin, a-kind: a form of play,5 a lyrical joy. ___ To care for the cut that had to be made, or was made anyway. ___ Me (maybe it helps me to help the plant, somehow). ___ A figure of speech or course in the break and growth of language.6 (I pulled it a/part and waited. For the breaking through, the split of stem into roots.)

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___ To plant, finally, in the ground. ___ Chiefly to be with, or to be something like ‘of’, but both of and its reverse. ___ To become full, sticky—to keep and remove the leaves drying. To see if what serves can survive the separation. ___ A particular event, making a place for roots. A circumlocution, a crack, a thing you do. A giving forth, a giving rise. ___ To imagine a future (:mothering) that is full of the Mothers who made it, you, possible, and from them, and you, Mothers to come—there, at that crux, the place of seeing, (exactly where and when and who you are).

Figure 1.6  Surprise! A further newness appears (January 1, 2022 [sketch])

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A Root/Route Called Cutting Together-Apart

A kenning, like a cut, contracts. Because “ocean” is more than “whale-road,” “whale-road” makes salient only specific parts. It narrows our attention. This is not unique to kennings, however, because all words have this contractive and parsive function (Barad, 2007; Brown, 2004; Schwenger, 2004). At the same time, a kenning, like a cut, expands. When “whale-road” kins with the idea (if not the word) of “ocean,” we think and see differently— the kenning pushes meaning back into the sites of the breaks. We learn to “squin[t]” (­Harleman Stewart, 1979, p. 119) and from this to see ocean as passage-­ journeying-marine-living-(currents-carved-by-bodies-sluicing-through-water). Of course, it works the other way too: there is still more “dislocation” (p. 120). When “ocean” contracts-expands, “whale-road” does, too. “Whale-road” now means more than its (metaphorical but still) denotative meaning, e.g., a path for whales. It carries with it now new kin: ships and gray-blue-green, stars in cold mist, storms seen at a great distance, light diffracted on waves, schools of fish playing in foam. A kenning, therefore, is a sort of “cutting together-apart” (Barad, 2014, p. 168; Coogler et al., 2022). It is a mechanism for making kin—for mothering words/ worlds.

…

The first word, the old word, mother’s ancient kin, was just a cry. It cracked quickly; it just wasn’t big enough to contain all that was needed, to hold her. So the earth broke it like bread, and blew the pieces like seeds to settle in soil. Listen. Hear it? The breath? Mo-ther. Mo – ther. Mo - - ther. Mo (breathe) ther. That’s what it sounds like: kinning. Mothering. It’s in how the cut of the breath (of the break) makes more.

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Figure 1.7 Living and dying kinned (February 20, 2022)

8

A Root/Route Called Mothering: Taking Liberties with Wor(l)ds

Kenning makes it all cleave together: mother, mothering, kin, ken, and kinning. My goal with drawing on kenning (as in writing about mothering) is not to replace meanings but to expand possibilities. To find ways to live “responseabl[y]” where I am (Haraway, 2017, p. 130). Of course, academics are rarely encouraged to “ventur[e] off” (Haraway, 2017, p. 130). I am still a graduate student, but I know the script. As a professor, you are expected to: – mother your CV, your colleagues, and your students (not your children). Be sure you are mothering enough, but not too much. (Work-work balance is so important, so be sure to teach, research and serve.)

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– have a green ($$) thumb. And, a fast growth rate. There’s little time for the slow, messy processes of cutting and growing roots in water and sun. – stick to your (disciplinary) roots/routes. The pre-mapped is preferable. Venture too far, and you become difficult to add to the campus map. Since I am not a professor, this is, of course, anecdotal. However, there is no shortage of literature showing that mothering is penalized in the academy (Blithe, 2021; Docka-Filipek & Stone, 2021). With this in mind, I wonder, What do these conditions do to mothers? What happens to them—and to scholarship and the world more broadly—when mothering is at once a checkbox and a hurdle for success? What sort of mothering thrives when it is forced into ‘highly-visible’ and ‘invisible’ forms and places—alternatively on the CV and beyond campus gates? Can we mother our way out of this mess, and if so, how?

…

Try it. Name yourself ‘mother’— the way the world named yours (and hers and hers before)— to see what it feels like. To see not just how you grow, but to feel in your veins a current of past and future, of her and her and her. 9

A Route/Root That Never Ends

What did I do? What am I still doing? (The growing continues.) I took a full, swollen word—mother—and let it swell. As it grew, it kinned with the soil (roots), with the sky (leaves), and with the past, present and future (kin). Kenning helped me find, make, explore, and care-for these cuts. I befriended the chasms as kin, taking the possibilities in walking off the path (Haraway, 2017), the becomings of the world (Barad, 2007, 2014), and the porosity of words (Koro et al., 2021), as one invitation. In truth, all mothering involves wild spaces of living/doing/being. Speculation, fabulation, creation. That is how I can think of this all as mothering: I “experience the multiplicity seething under the cover of words that are themselves events” (Koro et al., 2021). I have made cuts—knife to stem—I’m also taking advantage of the cracks that are already there. That birth the world,

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Figure 1.8 Across roots and gaps, life flows in (un)expected paths (March 1, 2022 [sketch])

and mothering, and me: the multiplicity, connecting and diverging inside and between words. Cuts inside cuts inside cuts; mothers mothering mothers mothering mothers, each of whom mother mothers mothered by mothers. Mothers and words are full of bursting of kin(s). As I planted and cared-for (beared-with) words and hydrangeas, myself and an-other(s), histories and futures, definitions and speculations—I made

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unexpected kin (Haraway, 2017). I did for small portions of the world what was done for me by loving hands: that is, kinning, that is kenning, that is… mothering: to become a channel— like the earth, a river—in relation, to those who inhabit its banks; the who from which an-other begins (beginning cusped in beginning in beginning, settled like rings sheltering in a tree’s ancient memory) (body giving to body, leaf to leaf): the source of a material substance; a structure that gives rise to similar structures; to profess to be kin and to thus kin, (to crack, to allow, to care, to break: a chasm or fissure in the earth or the skin through which we make family); in other words, a species, a sort, a kind; those by whom (and for whom) (and in whom) you are ken(ned): that is, known, conceived, admitted to being genuine, imparted with and by knowledge. That is, seen (you, from the place of seeing. There, where, you recognize the way she smells by your memory of rain, hairspray). That is, to know at once how it is to be of her but not her) meeting in her power and yours the future wedged in the cracks that she made when she split, stem-like, the world (her world) to make a place for you. Learn from her the angle, the pressure, the weight for leaning shoulder against the world, and bracing, and making it open.

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Notes 1 I think of these routes/roots like Deleuze & Guattari’s (1980/2018) rhizomes. 2 Le Guin and Naimon (2018). See pp. 68–70. 3 The situational irony is not lost on me: as I ‘kin,’ I am growing a plant in a pot, further domesticating it. However, I did run a little ‘wild’ with ‘kin’ as a word—exploring what all it, like mothering, could mean here and what it might create in the world. 4 This poem’s structure is inspired in part by Zambra (2016)’s Multiple Choice. 5 There are a couple notable connections to play in this conversation. Harleman Stewart (1979) calls a kenning “a vehicle for play” (p. 136), and Gurevitch (2000) associates poetry/writing with play in general. 6 Gurevitch (2000). See p. 6.

References Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting diffraction: Cutting together-apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.927623 Blithe, S. J. (2022). Collective rage: Unpacking the constraints, privilege, and roles of academic mothers during a global pandemic. Women’s Studies in Communication, 45(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2022.2025532 Brown, B. (2004). Thing theory. In B. Brown (Ed.), Things (pp. 1–22). The University of Chicago Press. Coogler, C. H., Melchior, S., & Shelton, S. A. (2022). Poetic suturing: The value of communal reflextion in self-study of teacher experiences. Studying Teacher Education, 18(3), 258–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2022.2079620 Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2018). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.) Bloomsbury Publishing. (Original work published 1980) Dickinson, E. (2000). I felt a cleaving in my mind. https://www.bartleby.com/113/ 1106.html (Original work published 1924) Dictionary.com. (n.d). Ken. Retrieved October 5, 2022, from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ken#:~:text=verb%20(used%20with%20 object)%2 Docka-Filipek, D., & Stone, L. B. (2021). Twice a ‘housewife’: On academic precarity, ‘hysterical women’, faculty mental health, and service as gendered care work for the ‘university family’ in pandemic times. Gender Work Organization, 28(6), 2158–2179. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12723 Faulkner, S. L. (2019). Poetic inquiry: Poetry as/in/for social research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 208–230). Guilford Press.

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Flint, M. (2020). Fingerprints and pulp: Nomadic ethics in research practice. Art/ Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 5(1), 1–15. https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/ari/index.php/ari/article/view/29485/21965 Freeman, M. (2017). Modes of thinking for qualitative data analysis. Routledge. Gurevitch, Z. (2000). The serious play of writing. Qualitative inquiry, 6(1), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040000600101 Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373780 Koro, M., Vitrukh, M., Bowers, N., Mark, L., & Wells, C. T. (2021). Mentoring (maybe) as a philosophical event. In K. W. Guyotte & J. R. Wolgemuth (Eds.), Philosophical mentoring in qualitative research: Collaborating and inquiring together (pp. 211–237). Routledge. Le Guin, U. K., & Naimon, D. (2018). Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on writing. Tin House Books. Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Ken. Retrieved October 5, 2022, from https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/ken Oxford English Dictionary (OED). (n.d.). Ken, n.1. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from www.oed.com/view/Entry/102886 Oxford English Dictionary (OED). (n.d.). Kenning, n.2. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from www.oed.com/view/Entry/102922 Oxford English Dictionary (OED). (n.d.). Kin, n.1. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from www.oed.com/view/Entry/103433 Oxford English Dictionary (OED). (n.d.). Kin, n.2. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from www.oed.com/view/Entry/103434 Oxford English Dictionary (OED). (n.d.). Periphrasis, n. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from www.oed.com/view/Entry/141026 Schwenger, P. (2004). Words and the murder of the thing. In B. Brown (Ed.) Things (pp. 135–150). The University of Chicago Press. Shelly, M. (2012). Frankenstein, the original 1818 text (D. L. McDonald & K. Scherf, Eds.) (3rd ed.). Broadview Press. (Original work published 1818) Shelton, S. A., & Flint, M. A. (2019). The spacetimemattering and Frankenstein-esque nature of interview transcriptions. Qualitative Research Journal, 19(3), 202–212. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-03-2019-104 Stewart, A. H. (1979). Kenning and riddle in old English. Papers on language and literature, 15(2), 115–136. Zambra, A. (2016). Multiple choice (M. McDowell, Trans.). Penguin Books. (Original work published 2014)

CHAPTER 2

The Other Mothers

No, Not the Ugly Stepmothers or the Fairy Godmothers…the Teacher Mothers Stephanie Anne Shelton and Tamara Brooks Abstract Set in the magical and not-so-far-away land of “Akuhdaymeah,” this fairy tale explores what it means to mother as an educator, even as that labor is often dismissed and devalued. Then, as the invisible monster “COVID” spreads across the land, the story considers the potential of collective mothering and feminist work to dismantle patriarchy and situate mothering as diverse, complex, and necessary.

Keywords mothering – LGBTQ+ – teaching – teacher – classrooms – fairy tale

1 Introduction Once upon a time…because that is how most proper fairy tales begin, isn’t it? Except this story isn’t just once upon a single time, but a story that reverberates across many moments throughout many times. So. Once in a moment of time across many iterations of similar times… Yes. Better. More honest, at least. Once in a moment of time across many iterations of similar times there was a land that we shall call “Akuhdaymeah,” where there lived many amazing and super-powered intellectuals, many of whom were exceptionally talented yet under-appreciated, and most of those under-appreciated people were women. Two of these women, Stephanie and Tamara (because you’ll have to forgive us

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for keeping our names as they are—there’s only so much creativity that we can be expected to inject into this telling at once), had the magical abilities to teach and research. These were incredible, magical powers that benefitted the entire kingdom of Akuhdaymeah, and contributions from which every citizen reaped rewards. For many years, Stephanie and Tamara shared this talent across the land, using their magical teaching and researching abilities to support students, to reimagine pedagogical and research practices, and to challenge injustices in the land of Akuhdaymeah. As they taught and researched, they sometimes got asked questions that had nothing to do with their magical abilities. These included, “Are you married?” and “Do you have children?” and, quite often, “How do you teach and work with children if you don’t have any of your own?” So many citizens of Akuhdaymeah seemed obsessed with asking Stephanie and Tamara, “Are you mothers?” This was a challenging question, because there seemed a rift in how those featured in this tale seemed to understand mothering. Stephanie and Tamara had long ago agreed that their marital and childrearing statuses did not prevent them from serving their students, from being committed to students’ well-being and safety with care and compassion, from mothering. They remained certain, even as the many (invasive and inappropriate) questions needled the air, their ears, their skin, and their hearts, those inquiries insinuating that mothering was necessarily anatomical, and that those who did not have and raise children were not mothering. However, as fairy tales often go, the protagonists of this story knew better than these naysayers. One day, one of these naysayers sniffed judgmentally, narrowed their eyes, and asked, “So, how many kids do you have?” Stephanie and Tamara were particularly tired of these silly questions, so on this day, Tamara lifted her chin and replied, “Oh, well over 1,500 by now.” Stephanie nodded seriously and agreed, “Oh, yes. Easily that many.” The person sputtered for a moment but then recovered and curled their lip. “Ah yes,” they replied, “but how many have you had?” Stephanie and Tamara shrugged and responded, “We already told you. They were all ours, to be sure.” The person rolled their eyes and walked away, but not before muttering, “So they’re not actually mothers. Just teachers and researchers.” As if mothering was only biology. Stephanie and Tamara heard these sorts of comments constantly. While they did this work and endured these comments, remaining certain that they did indeed mother, they heard others say, “Mothering teaches children to value themselves for who they are,” and “Mothering helps students to be strong enough to self-advocate if others refuse to accept them,” and “Mothering helps children to know that you care.” YES, YES, YES. Stephanie and Tamara nodded in agreement. Such work was invaluable, and they said to one another, “We

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do this work of mothering, too.” And, furthermore, “Our work helps others to do this mothering better, as well.” They knew, as many others did not seem to, that mothering was more complex than someone having and using a uterus. Mothering was understanding, care and commitment. Mothering was actions, not merely (or sometimes ever) anatomy. After one particularly trying day, when several presumably well-­intentioned people had again insisted that mothering required giving birth, Stephanie and Tamara sat under a shady tree in a park in Akuhdaymeah. They were weary and wary. There had been so many days of others—children’s families, ­Akuhdaymeah’s scholars and rulers, random people—insisting that “I could never do that teaching and research work. Ugh. Who wants that kind of magic? Supporting all of those students’ constant needs? The endless work? Having to deal with other teachers? No way,” while simultaneously maintaining “But you’ve never had a child of your own. You don’t really understand what these students need, beyond what’s happening with classroom content.” To ­Stephanie and Tamara, doing work that supported students’ well-being and success certainly seemed to be mothering, but so many had insisted that they were wrong, wrong, wrong. “I think about all that we’ve done through teaching and research to benefit and to care for students, both children and adults. Is that not mothering?” The park was beautiful: fluttering leaves, blossoming beds of flowers, soft and springy grass underneath them. Truly a fairy tale setting. But on the inside, Stephanie and Tamara felt dark and drained. So many competing words. So much need for their work. So many discounting that work because of how others seem to narrow “mothering” to be necessarily and exclusively physical. They were confident that these others were wrong. Plucking grass up and sifting through her fingers, Stephanie leaned back on her elbows and recalled that time when they had realized that there were many lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and other marginalized (LGBTQ+) students throughout A ­ kuhdaymeah who were not being supported in schools across all levels, from early grades into advanced graduate studies. And that many teachers and families were not doing a very good job of empowering them, even if they wanted to. She and Tamara remembered how they had agreed that they had been determined to help, agreeing that “Just yelling at these teachers and families is not going to work.” After all, “We have also failed these students at times,” they had agreed. “No one always does everything exactly right.” In considering how they would help students, teachers, and families, they knew that there were portions of the kingdom of Akuhdaymeah where regional rulers had made laws that hurt LGBTQ+ people and worked to prevent teachers and families from helping these students at all. Stephanie and Tamara cared very deeply for these students, but they were also hurt themselves after being told so many times, “No,

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this isn’t mothering” and “what you do is important, but it isn’t mothering.” Determined to mother well, even though it was hard and frustrating, they needed to be thoughtful and caring—not just to the students, but to those who had discounted them, too. With a raised eyebrow, Tamara laughed and asked, “Wait, isn’t trying to do this work in this way a pretty essential characteristic of mothering, too?” Weary and wary, but also determined, they went to work. Mindful of the many competing forces working to prevent these efforts, Stephanie and Tamara agreed that they needed to pause and reflect. Deeply. Mothering, they had reminded one another, is about empowering others and showing concern, but how to do so is often not intuitive or easy. So, they worked together to think about reasons that they had failed LGBTQ+ students. To reflect on what they had learned through their own mothering efforts. Then, they offered both honest self-reflection and new research-based strategies to fellow teachers and families (Shelton & Brooks, 2021a). They emphasized the importance of adults—educators, researchers, and families—actively examining their own assumptions and limitations, so that they might serve students and fill those gaps with honesty and intentionality. Even as they heard murmurs to the right and left of “But you’re not mothering,” they also heard others exclaim that their efforts were oh-so-helpful. Magical, even. To the point, in fact, that new lands outside of the kingdom of Akuhdaymeah read their ideas and asked Stephanie and Tamara to offer strategies for them, too (Shelton & Brooks, 2021c). They happily did so, as they wanted to use their magical work to support students, families, and fellow educators. Akuhdaymeah could be a not-nice-place, including for LGBTQ+ people, and they wanted their efforts to make life and work better for everyone. They thought back to what they had heard others say, and they nodded to themselves, sure that those people’s criticisms were in error. YES, YES, YES. “This is mothering,” they agreed. “That’s a good example,” Tamara smiled. She plucked a small flower from the park’s grass and twirled it in her fingers. “You know, that thing we did before is a good example, too.” Stephanie shifted from propping on her elbows to lying on the carpet of grass, tucking her arms behind her head. “Oh, yeah! Definitely mothering,” she agreed. It had happened after one of those times when a person had discounted them as mothers, because they hadn’t physically had a child. The angry person had chastised, “Mothering is about teaching children to build relationships, about enabling them to manage difficult moments in productive ways. Mothering is about open and honest communication with one’s children.” Uh, YES, YES, YES. Stephanie and Tamara had nudged one another and smiled in happy agreement. “If that’s mothering,” Tamara had said, “then we’re definitely mothering every single day!” The person had nearly spit out their drink, so Stephanie and Tamara had shrugged and explained. As part of their magical work in Akuhdaymeah, they had realized

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that students were really struggling to discuss complex and controversial topics (Shelton & Brooks, 2019, 2021b). Over and over again, students had tried to talk about a range of complicated issues, and they had been frustrated that their efforts had led to arguing, anger, and even silence and withdrawal. Students wanted and needed to talk about gender, about sexuality, about racism, about ­colonization—really, about a range of politically-charged topics. Stephanie and Tamara realized that in order for them to interact in supportive and caring ways, they needed to find ways to care for the students, and help the students learn to care for one another. Tamara started this work by modeling for students how to examine personal biases and then actively listen so that students could build a community of understanding together. She told students, “I have a lot of biases. These are moments when I made unfair assumptions about others. These are moments when who I am shaped what I thought and how I treated others. And I don’t necessarily control them, so I have to examine and be aware of them, so that they don’t control me.” She emphasized that the point was not to agree but to consider others’ perspectives. Similarly with her own students, Stephanie had centered discomfort as a productive way to learn and share (Shelton, 2022). By shifting away from discussion and learning being contingent on agreement, this approach invited difference as the basis of relationships and discussions. Students considered ways that feeling discomfort about specific topics or issues was based on deeply held and uninterrogated assumptions, and how acknowledging that discomfort might help them to not only grow, but to be more open to others’ positions. She shared with students moments that caused her discomfort, and then talked through her thought processes to consider what these competing considerations might offer her. She accentuated that arriving at comfort and agreement were not the point; instead, the goal was to recognize discomfort as a valuable way to both self-interrogate and explore challenging topics with and because of others. “What is mothering,” Stephanie and Tamara wondered, “if not providing a safe place for children and even adult students to grow and explore, while teaching them to support and care for others?” Both efforts had modeled vulnerability and honesty, while positioning Stephanie and Tamara to grow with and because of students. Laughing, Tamara flicked the flower that she had been holding away and nodded. “Definitely mothering.” Stephanie looked up at the puffy clouds drifting by and smiled. “Definitely.” 2

The Invisible Monster and Frozen Land

Later that day, after they had gotten home from the park, they heard the heralds’ trumpets outside. This was the way that Akuhdaymeah notified its

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citizens of incoming dangers—most often dragons, the random enraged ogre, or the runaway magical carriage. This announcement, though, was strange. Stephanie’s brow wrinkled as she glanced at Tamara to ensure that she had heard the same. “An invisible monster? Stay in our houses?” Tamara’s fingers purpled as she pressed against the window’s ledge. “That’s what I heard, too. People are already dead? Others dying?” The herald had called this new and unseen threat “COVID.” Both jumped at a new trumpeter, whose peals were followed by an announcement that everything was closed. Everything. Schools, stores, restaurants. This silent monster had muted and frozen the entire land. For about a week, everyone sat at home trying to learn the best ways to be safe, to manage lives moved entirely online. Then their virtual reality began. Akuhdaymeah had long used the magic of the internet to connect people across miles and years, but this was new: an entire kingdom forced to move to a space that had never been known to be warm and welcoming. Stephanie and Tamara had returned to their respective homes, with the park feeling millions of miles away with the Akuhdaymeah-wide order to shelter-in-place. Both had long enjoyed their independence, but the silence of isolation hung thick as even the smallest sounds echoed off their individual homes’ walls. Conversely, across the land, numerous mothers cried for help as they found themselves clawing for a moment of silence, an instance of solitude. Mothers of Akuhdaymeah found the physical, literal overlaps of work and home just too much—all while the invisible monster continued to crawl across and cover the land. At home, Stephanie and Tamara found the quiet of their homes an odd contrast to the constant flicker and clatter of computer screens. The park and classrooms had been replaced with seemingly interminable Zoom sessions. Both were aware of the ways that their contexts differed from those who mothered at home, but the reality of mothering did not stop for them because they were physically alone. Instead, they became all the more aware that often women without children are called upon to do extensive service within and for Akuhdaymeah (Flaherty, 2017). The previous refrains of questions had been replaced instead with, “Oh, you don’t have kids at home do you? Would you mind taking this over, then? Doing this additional work, too?” More work related to mothering because they were not considered mothers. One day while stuck alone at home, Stephanie sat in her living room recliner, eyes dried out from the extensive screen time, and her back aching from the sedentary hours spent online. But this was important. A student in the Zoom box was surrounded by pitch black darkness and spoke in hushed tones. She was hiding in a closet from an abusive family member and needed ­Stephanie’s support. Before the COVID monster had descended on the land, a range of

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on-campus resources would have been put into motion, but now many of those services were closed down, while the student was desperately in need. From miles away, Stephanie coordinated with various other professionals to connect the student with help, with care, with support, while emphasizing her own concern and commitment for the student’s safety. Tamara sat awash in a similar computer screen glow, working hard to reassure students that they were okay, that they still had community, even as they found themselves separated from peers. The collapse of work and home inevitably shaped students’ needs and experiences, and informed the measures of care and concern that Tamara poured out to them across virtual screens. Over the weeks and months that passed, both Stephanie and Tamara found themselves precariously balanced across ranges of old and new responsibilities. Emails with “This person’s having to manage childcare, so can you take this on” requests flooded their inboxes as blue light from laptops flooded their homes. Certainly the work that Stephanie and Tamara continued to do to support students was unquestionably mothering. The care and community building that they poured across virtual gatherings helped to comfort them, to offer critically important support and resources. But, now, mothering needed to stretch to mothers themselves. This new monster called for new forms of mothering. So, in that moment that stretched across many iterations of similar times, they considered the new responsibilities that stretched their days, their energies and their efforts. They began to wonder: Have we overlooked other monsters that are plaguing the land? 3

The Other Monster

Certainly COVID was a scary, invisible monster looming over Akuhdaymeah and so many other lands. But, the more that Stephanie and Tamara thought about the ways that they had mothered before this moment and now, the more they realized that a major issue was that mothering was expected but devalued. Labor that had been omnipresent and taken-for-granted until it overlapped with everything else. While they had been dismissed as not mothers—“you’re not really mothering, I mean, you don’t have your own kids”—other mothers were being dismissed as mothers: “You chose to have kids, so now that you’re stuck at home with them, you can take care of them.” Neither stance was compassionate or helpful. Positioning only certain people as “mothering” devalued those who, like Stephanie and Tamara, did this work for innumerable children and students over many decades; situating “mothering” as something to be done

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perpetually, without regard to mothers’ personal needs, made mothering an unforgiving and unacknowledged obligation. Whether mothers or mothering, these viewpoints dehumanized mother(ing). It was not a coincidence, then, Stephanie and Tamara noted, that while they and so many others who mothered struggled to carry on, there was a group within Akuhdaymeah who was actually benefiting from this monster ravaging the land: those who did NOT mother but who benefitted from mothering’s work (Kitchener, 2020), the Unmothers. Many of these individuals were men; all were people who did not fully understand how much work that mothering took, and how hard mothering had become in this new landscape. Their refusal to value mothering and the structure of misogyny and patriarchy that they maintained had been there, all along—an Unmother monster curled around the land of Akuhdaymeah for many long years. An ancient monster the new COVID monster woke up, with its roaring, malicious rage. 4

Imagining a Happy Ending

A couple of years have passed since the heralds’ warnings of COVID rang throughout the kingdom. In a typical fairy tale, heroes would have vanquished that monster and then neatly dispatched the patriarchy, too. But killing invisible monsters—particularly when their poison sometimes seems to help some while harming others—makes such tidy endings hard to imagine, much less to accomplish. Besides, in thinking through the ways that a lot of other fairy tales end, Stephanie and Tamara had grown tired of the ones featuring a single, solitary hero, riding to the rescue on the back of that patriarchal monster. Unmothers (those without mothering responsibilities, but who have benefitted from that work) are pretend heroes, at best. Let us be done with such fairy tales and false heroes. Let us, instead, imagine new possibilities and new futures in Akuhdaymeah. A space where everyone who mothers is recognized for the work they do. Where those who mother are not divided into factions based on a uterus. Let us avoid arguably breeding new monsters, waiting to snap at the heels of all who do this work. Mothering is, indeed, a magical force. It shapes the very fabric of ­Akuhdaymeah, of the entire world. Those who mother are the ones who hold the power for a real happily ever after. Valuing mothering guts the bloated, angry monsters that surround us, and in vanquishing them, mothers—of all kinds—can craft new tales that center care, compassion, and strength—for children, for students, for themselves, for all the land.

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Then, we will indeed live happily ever after, in many moments across times and times to come. So. Let’s. References Flaherty, C. (2017). Relying on women, not rewarding them. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/04/12/study-finds-femaleprofessors-outperform-men-service-their-possible-professional Kitchener, C. (2020). Women academics seem to be submitting few papers during coronavirus. ‘Never seen anything like it,’ says one editor. Lily. https://www.thelily.com/ women-academics-seem-to-be-submitting-fewer-papers-during-coronavirusnever-seen-anything-like-it-says-one-editor/ Shelton, S. A. (2022). “Communities of discomfort”: The importance of rural communities in empowering LGBTQ+ ally work. English Education, 54(3), 177–195. Shelton, S. A., & Brooks, T. (2019). Finding hope while teaching controversy. English Journal, 108(2), 112–115. Shelton, S. A., & Brooks, T. (2021a). Everyday reflections and addressing racism and LGBTQ+ issues. English Journal, 110(6), 90–94. Shelton, S. A., & Brooks, T. (2021b). Queering the consent process: (Un)masking participant identity in risky LGBTQ+ teacher ally work. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 34(9), 812–829. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1942300 Shelton, S. A., & Brooks, T. (2021c). Teacher reflection and the intersections of racism and LGBTQ+ issues. International Council of Teachers of English, 2021(5), 21–23.

CHAPTER 3

Sources of Hope into, through & beyond Academic Mothering during the Pandemic Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor Abstract Hope. I can’t explain it. I’m full of it. When pregnant on the cusp of tenure at a university with no parental leave, my body ached for it. My mind told me that despite insufficient and expensive childcare options, despite the absence of my child or rooms at my workplace for nursing or pumping, life as a university professor, untenured to tenured, could be good even great with children. Then as my children turned ten and twelve, the pandemic arrived and public schools remained closed as both my children moved into and through middle school behind closed bedroom doors. Poetry helped me navigate what was and was not in my control. This poetic essay presents six poems in stanzas and two prose poems that were crafted 2020–2022 to help the author navigate tensions regarding various binaries such as between body and mind, child and parent, social justice and social terrorism, human and non-human love, and information and disinformation.

Keywords poetry – motherhood – pandemic – precarity

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I start this chapter about academic motherhood and hope with a poem, “Home Isolation, Day 42” authored in March 2020 and published in Spring 2021 (­Cahnmann-Taylor, 2021). 1

Home Isolation, Day 42 I walk into my son’s room. It smells of boy funk, dog,

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and morning breath. When I ask: Do you need any help? I mean tornados, fractions, conjugations but I also mean interrogations of the gentler kind: How are you doing? What do you miss? How can I substitute for your losses? To open his door to a dirty sock, whirring laptop, is to nose toward a better version of myself, remember door jamb, hinge and strike, are necessary support to a frame.

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The university where I’ve made an academic home had no official policies to mandate masks in Spring or Fall of 2020 then no assurances we’d all be vaccinated in 2021. Yet, I was still intent, yet I must also say privileged, to see pandemic events in my 2020 home life through mostly rose colored glasses. In 2020–2021 I had more time than I might ever have had with my children and spouse so “Home Isolation” was also filled with unique connection. We baked cakes, cookies and bread. We did workouts in front of the television together. We pushed internet limits in four corners of a small house, then we pushed some more and invited our first rescue pet into our 2000 square feet of 24-hour-a-day shared experience. We found more room in our hearts and home when we found a second animal abandoned at a nearby hotel parking lot. We were “spread thin” as the virus spread in our community but we learned new languages to keep our hope alive and believe that, because of the stronger structures we created at home, that we might each become better versions of ourselves because of the violences and terror of our historical moment. As bitter political divisions took over public and private discourses, I remarked my own children’s insistence in their belief in the “niceness” of human nature. The following two poems were written around Memorial Day weekend, late May 2020, when we had come to accept the need to isolate from one another while recognizing others’ abandonment. The lines between motherhood and scholarship blurred as did the lines between my fields of applied linguistics and the language of poetry. I invited an intellectual and personal meditation on the word, “spread” and what it meant to spread my love from the human to the nonhuman world (Cahnmann, 2020a; Cahnmann, 2021b).

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Nouning, March 2020

N. The process of turning verbs and adjectives into nouns, also called nominalization. What an awesome spread! Said at weddings, even funerals, of butter, gossip, wings, two facing newspaper pages. What spreads. We said this for uncountable nouns: acres, days, contagious smiles, laundered tablecloths, for gaps between sellers’ asks and buyers’ bids. When panic emptied grocery shelves, cancelled parades, rain checked games, invitations,

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we were spread thinner, worked from home, returned, gloved and masked to old fashioned verbing so as not to spread too much of ourselves around. 3

“She’s Nice So Someone Will Want Her” A black stray, mangled with grey sluff under a thin, black coat, rib bones so pronounced under torso one can imagine her already under grounds she barely stands on. Hind leg contorted, dragged two miles to follow me home after I’d held her a plastic water cup. People don’t always want what’s nice. They want four legs, Labs or Retrievers. Or they fall on hard times and are harder on those below them. The dog’s second full dish of food’s gone. Her tail’s aflame, screen whacking in wait while our first rescue pup spoons with me on the sofa,

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certain of two meals a day, treats to sit. Stay. Okay! chirped and he bounds the front yard while the back’s closed with this homeless girl. When I said we’d take her, soon, to animal control I was startled by my son’s words, the same I wanted to believe. But there’s not as much niceness going around. We’re starved for it, the full feeling so grand, you want to feed it from your hand, bathe its soiled, sore paw, scratch its kind head as she bows. 4 Precarity and Theories Related to Poetry, Covid, and Academic Motherhood Many consider poetry a dark art of the soul, verses that can see the glass both half full and half empty. The poems I wrote during the pandemic served as a way to process the ongoing uncertainty; to find courage to keep going, to hope, through what has seemed to be the darkest time in my living history as a mother, a scholar, a citizen, a poet. I acclimated to teaching online, including a doctoral seminar on arts-based research which met weekly, synchronously online. Online pandemic teaching gave me courage to invite one of my academic heroines to speak to my class, Anna Tsing, author of a book I had assigned to illustrate mergers between the arts, sciences and ethnography, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Tsing, 2015). Through the long-term, interdisciplinary, and multi-location research of the precarity involved in mushroom harvesting, Tsing (2015) proposes, “[W]hat if our time is ripe for sensing precarity? What if precarity, indeterminacy, and what we imagine as trivial are the center of the systematicity we seek?” (p. 20). As Judith Butler (2009) notes, the concept of precarity arose in the context of labor and working conditions under globalization and capitalism as a heightened and unevenly experienced exposure to institutional and social violence. Tsing (2015) uses precarity to describe an ontological life condition that is “earthwide”, one where all human and nonhuman life lacks security and remains in a state of flux with limited futures. Therefore, precarity is understood as a condition of exposure and interdependency between humans, species, and the ever-changing world. Butler states that “[p]recarity exposes our sociality, the

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fragile and necessary dimensions of our interdependency” (Butler, 2012, p. 119), the threads that weave together the humanities. Michalinos Zembylas (2019) argues that seeing precarity and vulnerability in exclusively negative terms, something to be avoided and/or overcome, is an error. Rather, Zemblylas espouses “theorizing a renewed sense of precarious pedagogy” (p. 100), one which embraces interdependency, recognizes vulnerability as a strength rather than a weakness, and critically engages with unequal distributions of precariousness. Such a critical pedagogy for precarity can invite conversations about “the consequences of this or that ethical position in relation to conditions of violence, suffering, and oppression” (p. 106). In the case of academic precarity and motherhood during the pandemic, I understood this as a condition of interdependency and vulnerability that connected our human and nonhuman lives. Poetry helped me to discover strength and beauty within precarity and fear. Not only were friends, family members, and neighbors falling ill to COVID, but many women friends were experiencing breast cancer and other illnesses that became even more frightening while parenting during the pandemic. I reflected on the “before the pandemic life”, recalling a surprise experience I shared with my children when they were much younger; when we stopped at a farm en route to their daycare center. My own precarity seemed interlaced with human and nonhuman mothers of all kinds. In these poems I reflect on things I did and things “I don’t do anymore” as a result of the pandemic. 5

Forties Still Life with Two Small Children “Prolapsed,” said a tender man who’d rounded the barn’s corner, up since 4:30 am pushing innards back after a lamb’s tiny legs had caught under its hulk. “Genetically predisposed,” he’d said, the way biblical Sarah might have felt after taking Isaac to the mountain. It’s the mothers, before school, who stop at barns to pet the sheep, shuttle weekend altitudes to pick pink lady apples. She’d called each ewe “he” at first. Do you hear “him?” Here “he” comes, “he’s” hungry to the one that lay near a red bucket cracked

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from aggressive grazing. Still water curdled with hay, saliva, her macho bleats for more feed, less pull of matted ears, to stop a five-year-old’s tap on its head. Why’s there blood? Is that one dead? It’s the mothers who outsmart cancers with double mastectomies, credible candidates of grief, surviving pandemics, radical hysterectomies. “Meant to be,” the barn man said. “The baby will live.” 6

There Are Things I Don’t Do Anymore What I notice are shoes. They’re Oxfords, like the university, with stitching on the toe caps, little wings to fly to Geography offices, stiff flats, the kind in which you could chase an animal or climb three flights of stairs in a poorly ventilated building to skirt colleagues in drab attire, get the last vacant seat, passing envious eyes at your feet. My French neighbor walks a shiny pair alongside her dog. She answers the wrong question. I’d asked if she’d bring her pet to play with mine. I’m going to work, she said. It must have been the shoes. Oh, I say. Because I don’t do that anymore: going to work, booking plane tickets to a big city for a friend’s birthday,

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adding lipstick before leaving for the play, telling the babysitter: there’s a rotisserie you can heat in the microwave. Please, have them to bed by ten. 7

Asking Tough Questions & Listening for Tough Answers

I conclude this poetic essay with three poems that meditate on my ongoing concerns about rising rates of rage, disinformation, and the “fake news” dismissals of all scientific investigation and journalism. These are precarious times. The poems help me discover the language to name and claim complicated feelings about the current states of uncertainty in which all of us find ourselves as we mother and scholar in community with others. 8

Making Sense of White Male Rage I saw it, we all did, at a red light when a driver scurried to grab two Buds from the truckbed then slammed the door. On a Sunday field when a boy scored on his uncle I heard it, we all did, loud as a self-propelled howitzer. It was in the news, again, reprimanded but nostalgic for Good Times, shag carpet laughter absorbing flakes of its dead skin. Is consent how it begins? Like a spider who relents to a rake,

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like concrete breaking beneath hydraulic hammers, there’s no cooing or soothing its thirsts for firsts to bump into breasts, restless conquests to wrestle back the arms’ preference to break rather than give. Unapologetic as it yells, it solicits donations for hate, to protect what lies at its fragile border, to get outta its fuckin’ way! 9

Knowledge on the Vaccine (Prose Poem)

Nah, I’m not vaccinated. I don’t believe in it.1 Listen, you think this is new? This ain’t new. They’ve been planning this for years. They knew before we knew. My sister, she got sick with it in November. In New York. She was on ventilators and in the hospital for three months, couldn’t breathe. And they didn’t tell us till January, March. Trump knew. It’s all planned. I’ve done my research. Listen, I’ll show you this video Who’s that governor, the one who’s a wrestler? Ace Ventura. Yeah, he found those coffins, all those plastic coffins just waiting for us. Why do you think they’ going to the moon? They don’t call it NASA anymore they, they don’t call it the moon. They call it planet X. Yeah, I don’t believe in vaccines. I’m an antivaxxer. I didn’t want my daughters to get vaccinated but I got so mad at my wife for doing it. My daughter, she’s two and she’s not right. She’ll be playing just playing and all the sudden you say, “how you doing?” and she goes R­ AHHHHHH, just like that. “Rahhhhhh,” like she’s a monster. It’s not right. She’s not right. I know what they did to her: too much mercury. And now my doctor is saying

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the FDA is going to approve it and then I might have to get a vaccine. You know what my name is? Knowledge. I got it written on my shirt. Knowledge. I wish we had more time to talk. 10

Fake News

Fake out’s a tease like make out’s a kiss; take out’s Chinese like to stake out’s a wish; fake it ‘til you make it or shake it just don’t break.2 It’s hard to resist. Insist. Fake news’s like a shoe you don’t choose, a prelude that’s a reason to brood like a fever in disguise as a decent guy in a bowtie with a bucket list that’ll break. Lost confidence in what’s real, so we bargain with what’s fake? A mistake. The way uke sounds like nuke and ukulele like Ukraine then weathermen claim 10% chance of rain. And it pours and we’re sore but the science’s the same: it just happens to be one of those days when it rains. What a pain that the poets in Kviv want to eat so they rehearse verses on sheets that repeat. Fake news is abused by those who’d steal clues to deduce truth not something printed and sold, just nuanced undertones told by the bold or the crazy. Intersectional’s more than directional and implies heterogeneity of species and complexion, cross sections of connection. Believe it, it’s true but never cease to question oppression. Just host and post jam sessions of expression. Notes 1 Performance link: https://youtu.be/B0xhXip4wa4 2 Performance link: https://tinyurl.com/3s4jwar2

References Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war: When life is grievable. Verso. Butler, J. (2012). Precarious life, vulnerability, and the ethics of cohabitation. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 26(2), 134–151. Cahnmann, M. (2021). She’s so nice, someone will want her. https://sustainability.uga.edu/ _resources/images/earth-day-art-2021/tate-taylor.jpg Cahnmann-Taylor, M. (2020, March). Nouning. District Lit Magazine. https://www.cmlt.uga.edu/news/stories/2020/nouning-march-2020?fbclid= IwAR3FTPd-A7HRHcB6SPtzN5Ju1eQfiN-euSff4R4SfrM6Ab-18KZnuR2YcZc Cahnmann-Taylor, M. (2021). Home isolation, Day 42. Mom Egg, 19. http://momeggreview.com/

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Cahnmann-Taylor, M. [@Melisa Cahnman-Taylor]. (2021, August 24). Knowledge on the vaccine (Dramatic perspective) [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/B0xhXip4wa4 Cahnmann-Taylor, M. [@mishawhaddyawisha] (2022, March 3). “Fake news” spoken word poem [Tiktok]. https://tinyurl.com/3s4jwar2 Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world on the possibility of life in capitalistic ruins. Princeton University Press. Zembylas, M. (2019). The ethics and politics of precarity: Risks and productive possibilities of a critical pedagogy for precarity. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 38(2), 95–111.

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Further Reading

Anzaldua, G. (2012). Borderlands/La frontera (4th ed.). Aunt Lute Books. Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge. Galman, S. C. (2007). Shane, the lone ethnographer: A beginner’s guide to ethnography. AltaMira Press. Holman Jones, S. L., Adams, T. E., & Ellis, C. (2013). Handbook of autoethnography. Left Coast Press, Inc.

PART #2 Mothering Part in Title Precarity

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CHAPTER 5

Rejecting Good Mother Becoming Otherwise in Precarity

Tynetta Jenkins, Erica Warren, Susan Ophelia Cannon and Elaine Thurmond Abstract In this chapter, four mothers came together to dream of doing ambition differently in the wake/midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors read together, mailed handwritten notes to one another, collaborated at weekly writing meetings, and began to write new futures for academic motherhood—futures where the lines between wife/ mother/woman/academic seep into one another, creating new beautiful shades of grey between the black and white demarcations that the world often expects women to hold. We explore and question how particular event-spaces make us legible in the academy and in motherhood—soccer mom, tenurable, publishable, “good” mother— and how we might fantasize into being event-spaces that allow us to unknow ourselves to better know each other. We explore the language of complaint as a transgressive space and write our way into presents that are more tenable, even if each present is lived fleetingly—precariously—in the space and time between our correspondences. The authors’ respective raced and gendered identities highlighted the ways our lives are differently precarious. We work to complicate notions and possibilities of identity drawing on the works of fiction and non-fiction authors who challenged our takenfor-granted notions of ourselves and each other. We began to think with identity as continual and perpetual splitting in a “becoming intersectional assemblage” (Puar, 2012, p. 63) of academic motherhood. And we worked to create together an intersectional assemblage of academic mothers with whom we can complain, create, honor slowness and with whom we can do ambition differently.

Keywords subjectivity – precarity – event-space – correspondence – writing

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Rejecting Good Mother: Becoming Otherwise in Precarity All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. (From Parable of the Sower. Butler, 1993/2019, p. 3)

There is a precarity in the memory of a woman’s body. The underlying feeling that everything could be taken away at any moment. Della Pollock wrote that birth stories, “offer us a peephole onto the hazy presence of danger. They play with disaster, knowing it will be cast out or contained within the comic structure of the story” (1999, p. 4). What might have been becomes palpable, threatening, and it is not the story that happened, not the future that we are living. The story could have gone in a different dangerous direction, but it did not, this time. Women have a long history of precarity, being “held or enjoyed at the favour of or at the pleasure of another person” (Oxford English Dictionary, n.d.). Being in danger and at the will of another’s whims, Virginia Woolf (1929/2012) argues that women needed money and a room of their own to dispel this precarity, to write and produce fiction: Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom and women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women then have not had a dog’s chance of writing poetry. (p. 106) She asks perhaps, tongue-in-cheek, “what had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us? Powdering their noses? Looking in at shop windows?” (1929/2012, p. 22). Is this precarity the mother’s fault? Precarity is our inheritance and one that we do not want to pass on. But how do we reject, or “(re)appropriate” (Dixon-Roman, 2017, p. 28) this inheritance to protect our own and our children’s futures and intellectual freedom? Yet, in trying to protect our children from future precarity, do we increase our own? Is that the cruel optimism (Berlant, 2011) of motherhood? I hear “keep sacrificing,” but what is there left to put on this altar? Do they truly want all that I have left? My children? My husband? My life1?

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For Berlant (2011), cruel optimism “exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing” (p. 1). We, as academic mothers, desire a better future for our children, a better future for ourselves, and this desire asks that we attach ourselves “to the soft hierarchies of inequality to provide a sense of their [our] place in the world” (p. 194). That place, according to Berlant, is not a casual one. It is one that promises anxiety, the desire to please without the possibility of ever being enough. The reward for the feeling of not-enoughness lives in the future, and that future is always around the next corner. Why can’t I do what others have done—ignore the obvious. Live a normal life. It’s hard enough just to do that in this world. (Butler, 1993/2019, p. 26) Perhaps we enter graduate school to write different futures, full of need and desire for other ways to read and write the world beyond good and bad. We find and make kin (Haraway, 2016) with other academic mothers.2 Theories allow us to intellectually tuck away the concept of ‘good mother’ or to expand it out, open it up, complicate and rewrite it. In this kinship, we asked ourselves how we might do ambition differently in the academy. It did not occur to us to not do ambition at all… I biked to work this morning and along the boardwalk there was a woman (a mother)? (an academic)? with binoculars looking into the trees. I asked her what she saw, there is a golden crowned kinglet, she said. I looked up and saw the rustle of leaves, a bit of motion. The tiniest bird was flitting around on a branch, never in one spot for more than a second. The woman said, they are only here in winter, As I left, I said, I need to come back through here when I can move slower. As I rode on, I wondered if we had been thinking about precarity all wrong, about precarity as a thing that is negative, rather than a thing that is constant.

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I ride on in my bright yellow vest red tail light flashing helmet on my head down the four-way road and then for a couple of miles on a highway access road. Is this not precarious? Yet I do not fear it. I feel good in my body and in the outdoors and I say good morning to the people I pass. I know I am in danger, yet I do not feel anxious or threatened. I am in the present. Wind, leaves, sweat, heavy breath. The golden crowned kinglet weighs between 5 and 6 ounces and can live in temperatures as low as −40 degrees. Does it dread the flight back and forth to Canada? Does it worry?… What if we desire a particular kind of present, rather than an imagined future? What if we began to know from somewhere else? How might we “imagine a potentialized present that does not reproduce all the conventional collateral damage” (Berlant, 2011, p. 263)? According to Berlant (2011), this requires fantasy. Our first fantasy was of how we might be in relation in writing this chapter. Ingold (2021), describes life as “a tangled mesh of correspondences, all going on concurrently, which weave into and around one another” (p. 11). He proposed that there are three distinguishing properties for correspondences. Every correspondence is a process: it carries on. Secondly, correspondence is open-ended: it aims for no fixed destination or final conclusion, for everything that might be said and done invites a follow-on. Thirdly, correspondences are dialogical…. To correspond is to be ever-present at the cusp where thinking is on the point of settling in the shapes of thought. It is to catch ideas on the fly, in the ferment of their incipience, lest they be washed away with the current and forever lost. (original emphasis, p. 11) We agreed to hand-write letters and mail them to each other. There was no prescribed topic though we all seemed to appreciate the opportunity to focus our feelings on mothering, effects of the pandemic, and navigating academia. We

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agreed to read Parable of the Sower (Butler, 1993/2019) and A Room of One’s Own (Woolf, 1929/2012) with the intention of building speculative fiction into our scholarship and thematic ties to motherhood in both texts. We met on Zoom every other week for four months. We began each meeting with 15–20 minutes of free writing in Google documents.3 We did not have agendas. We placed all our words together in one document. We surrendered our vulnerable selves to each other, to the idea of another possibility, to see what shapes of thought we settled into. The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees. (Butler, 1993/2019, p. 263) Following McKittrick (2021), we asked, “What if we read outside ourselves not for ourselves but to actively unknow ourselves; to unhinge, and thus come to know each other, intellectually, inside and outside the academy, as collaborators of collective and generous and capricious stories?” (p. 16). There were resonances and stark contrasts throughout our letters and across our stories. We were unknowing ourselves and our seemingly determinate futures a bit as we listened to each other. Our exhaustion from the pandemic was hardly ever acknowledged, but exhaustion from the demands of work, virtual learning days and keeping up with our own children’s needs, and personal attempts to move forward as best as we could materialized on paper.

Figure 5.1 A handwritten letter expressing appreciation for the therapeutic nature of ­writing letters to release suppressed emotions

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We knotted our stories together and, in doing so, opened ourselves to indeterminacy, to other possible futures and other possible nows. – When does a mother become a mother? (de Freitas & Sinclair, 2014) – When does an academic become an academic? – What are the processes, procedures, discourses, and disciplines that tune us to these identities and how are these identities in conflict? Both mothering and academia ask for more than can be given with little gratitude. Mothers are supposed to be strong and dependable, loving, caring, patient and resourceful. Academics are asked to be tireless and strict, tied to and respectful of hierarchical systems of knowledge and procedure. This is the way it is done. Your table of contents should look like this. You need to have cited xxxx. The internal push and pull between the desire to do ambition differently, and what we’ve idealized a good mother and academic to be is problematic. I’ll make bento boxes for my preschooler for lunch, I’ll make myself available for additional meetings and projects, and I’ll be certain to attend all practices and basketball games so my children feel supported. If I fall short of any of these commitments, I subject myself to criticism and even rejection from future employers, mothers, and my children who expect to see me cheering in the stands. For me and many other academic mothers, the security and well-being of my family is my first concern. But is my way of doing ambition truly best for my family? Augustine and others (2018) found that the opposite may be true– academic mothers doing it all are exhausted and less happy because they are pouring from an empty cup. Still, this is not enough for me to change my mind. It’s much more about what will increase my chances of occupying spaces that are not created by people like me/us or for people like me/us. Agarwal (2021) describes modern motherhood as full of injustices concealed by anxiety and guilt. But what if the world were gentler? What if hyperempathy syndrome were a more common complaint, and we could feel everyone’s pain (Butler, 1993/2019)? Would we not all be compelled to do ambition differently if we could feel the pain brought on by the present state? I have shared the pain and felt the guilt as an academic mother. I have not verbalized my exhaustion due to uncertainty and overdrive brought about by effects of the pandemic, in addition to being an academic mother. After we realized COVID-19 would be something we’d have to live with, and the panic subsided, life proceeded as normal with additional unacknowledged burdens.

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Figure 5.2 A handwritten letter describing the overwhelming sense of fatigue caused by the ongoing and new challenges faced in the aftermath of the pandemic

Hyperempathy, as Butler describes (1993/2019) has come naturally to me. I do desire to do ambition differently, but at what cost? I never know where my inner strength comes from to finish one task, and then proceed to others without hesitation. I only know that somehow the list of tasks gets shorter while growing simultaneously. [We] work tirelessly as though work and accolades are even what it’s about. The joys and agonies of motherhood are widely shaped by patriarchal constraints (Agarwal, 2021). Like Agarwal (2021), Glaser (2021) uses simultaneity to describe modern motherhood. Modern motherhood is demeaning while also managing to raise the stakes. What would a relational present look like? Where else might we know from (McKittrick, 2021) to rehumanize academic motherhood? How might a relational present create new possible futures of academic motherhood? New possible futures for onto-epistemologies?

Figure 5.3 A handwritten letter highlighting the sense of being overlooked and undervalued while navigating the complexities of academic motherhood

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Unknowing and Where We Know From

McKittrick (2021) promotes radical interdisciplinarity and a plea to “foster and share intellectual spaces—sometimes crammed into the corners of the academy, sometimes not—for and with each other in order to methodologically and analytically redefine what they think we are” (p. 121). The invitation to write this chapter prompted the creation of a shared intellectual space that recognized and affirmed the places that each of us know from. These safe spaces of free writing allowed poetic, problematic, and transgressive language beyond academic confines of what would otherwise be unaccepted. One of these transgressive languages was the language of complaint. Complaints that are taboo in the institution surfaced in this space. From girlhood, we are taught not to complain. And there is emotional work in not complaining, keeping the transgression secret, or minimizing its impact as though the complaint is unwarranted. The complaint might not be taken seriously, and we might take on the figure of the complainer (Ahmed, 2021). When we cannot complain, we might turn to question our perception of the situation rather than the behavior of others. Being able to complain in this space, to affirm and nod, created a new present, a digital void into which we could unload, a missive sent through the mail to arrive weeks later. There was a strength in putting complaints on paper—writing them down in ink—to be held in someone else’s hands with care, knowing that they would be attended to. We were anxious for our letters to arrive to each other, “did you get it yet?,” we asked, even as mail was especially slow. The waiting and anticipation deepened the desire for the words of the other. Ahmed (2021) wrote, “if a complaint can be how we keep a history alive, a complaint can be how we survive history” (p. 300). Survival, Ahmed cautioned, requires inventiveness. We invented a space where the complaints mattered. Ahmed (2021) wrote that complaining can “change how people reside somewhere, which requires an act of dwelling on the problems with or in that residence” (p. 102). How do we reside in places that deserve complaint? One option is to accept dehumanization; another is to resist and risk retaliation. McKittrick (2021) offered unknowing ourselves to resist dehumanization. For McKittrick, unknowing invites “unexpected intellectual conversations” and “reading what we cannot bear and what we love too much” (p. 17). In this space, we do not seek answers, “the steady focus is instead on working out how to share ideas relationally” (p. 17). In this inventive space, we attempted this unknowing. We wrote what we could hardly bear to write, much less to say aloud as academic mothers. And there was joy in the reading and writing together in relation as we shared

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Figure 5.4 A handwritten letter acknowledging the prioritization of family and children over personal aspirations and life choices

similar experiences and navigated the challenges of academic motherhood, ambition, race, and the pandemic. 3

On Subjectivity, Intersectionality, and Assemblage

We knew entering this chapter that our genders mattered; it was a paper on academic motherhood after all. And we quickly realized how much race ­mattered—of course it did—and we are still speculating on how it mattered, or how to talk/write about how it mattered and continues to matter. Just as we claim our motherhood, we also do not want that identity centered in every intra-action (Barad, 2007). Yet, race is central, and Blackness in this country can make Black livingness difficult. In writing about the precarity of biking to work, Susan perhaps could worry that she would be hit by a car, but she does not have to worry that she will be hit because of her Whiteness. We write this chapter as the Ahmaud Arbery jury trial takes place in our state, a state where running while Black allowed a man to be chased down and murdered in the street. And it is crucial to note that that occurrence, while tragic, is not as exceptional as many White people might like to believe. McKittrick (2021)

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offers “black livingness” (p. 186) and an uncomfortable satisfaction with the “unmeasurability of black life” (p. 121). Tears come to my eyes. My own womb connects to hers in this way. Bringing forth life and love and rage simultaneously. My days not thinking about the sons of other mothers lost to the violence against their tiny black bodies are done. Sleep forever replaced by quiet moments in the night alone wrestling with worry, hoping I’m enough to protect him, them, all of them. My son, theirs. Their sons, mine. Now a trip to the pet store is interrupted by a cop who pulled over a young Black man in the parking lot and I, not his mother, but the surrogate she did not ask for, I pause, and I wait. My eyes find the officer’s. Don’t mess with this young man. Don’t. 20 minutes later it ends. The officer pulls off; the young man does too, and I release him back to his own mother. She won’t ever know I mothered her son that day—he won’t. I count it a seed much like during the establishment of the community of Acorn, characteristic of inherent new life and survival amid death and destruction (Butler 1993/2019). Sowing a community of surrogates for my own son. In silence, and yet in solidarity. The unspoken burden we share. My son. Her son. Our son for a moment. And then the rage. When Ty spoke, it gave me chills and almost brought tears to my eyes. I understand her feelings because I felt the same way. I didn’t know at the time that I was preparing my 8-year-old son to be able to be a productive and respectful citizen as an adult in a world with social injustice. I pray for my son’s safety daily. I talk to my son daily. Some may say that he’s a momma’s boy. I talk to him daily because I want to stay in his head to make certain that his thoughts and mindset have not been distorted due to exposure to news media views on Social Injustice. I listen to him speak about today’s issues and how he is navigating through it all. It breaks my heart that we must have these conversations. Elaine is giving her son an inheritance of hearing otherwise and passing that to Ty as well Ways of saying otherwise, hearing otherwise. You might be knocking on the door of consciousness; remember, that door can be an inheritance, trying to hear something, to admit what has been shut out, the violence that is passed down by being made inaccessible. (Ahmed, 2021, p. 305) Yes, there are resonances in our stories, and we are not equally precarious. Puar (2012) wrote that feminist theorizing has spent decades considering difference as “difference from ‘White woman’” which “produces difference as a contradiction rather than as recognizing it as a perpetual and continuous process of splitting” (p. 53). So, we attempt in this paper to attend to the perpetual and

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continuous splits in our subjectivities, to attend to difference within. How do we write about motherhood without reifying a type of subject that is academic mother? How do we write as White and Black academics without being seen or heard as speaking for or only from identity? Puar (2012) offers the “becoming-intersectional assemblage” (p. 63) an honoring of Crenshaw’s (1991) concept of intersectionality and thinking it together and with assemblage. She asks, what do particular assemblages do? Assemblage as a concept honors all the complex, material, and indeterminate arrangements of an “event-space” (p. 60). Academic motherhood, then, is created through “events, actions and encounters between bodies, rather than simply entities and attributes of subjects” (Puar, 2012, p. 58), and, therefore, is always coming into existence in relation to others, materials, and discourses. Each event-space creates other possibilities of academic motherhood. What is the event-space that allows a bento box to be seen as a threat to our “good” mothering? What is the event-space that allows a body to be seen as soccer mom? Can that same event-space produce a tenurable body? What event-spaces might be constructed in academia to create different presents of academic motherhood? Much like when I was in labor with my children, I’m not quite ready to give birth to this new way of doing ambition. The future we have talked about throughout this paper—through letters, musings, and conversations—is full of unknowns and yet full of promise and hope and joy. This way of writing and relating, although liberating in its conception, also brings forth fear of ­rejection—that what we are doing here is not “acceptable.” Not only is this work emotional, feminine, irrational, but it is also black (and Black), angry, from the margins (hooks, 2000). We wrote into the stereotypes of woman, mother, Black woman, Black mother, and owned this way of being because the other option is to accept dehumanization. Kaur (2021) said that love and rage are not opposites, but that “love engages all our emotions: Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger is the force that protects that which is loved” (p. 106). So, in this doing we embraced rage as a manner of protecting that which we love—our right to be heard and seen and to exist in academia, not as a suppressed lie hiding the parts that do not appropriately fit the model of academic motherhood, but as ourselves. We say doing rather than done because although this chapter will eventually conclude, it serves as a commencement of a different sort of research. Through this work, we have created an eventspace that has allowed us to be otherwise as individuals and as participants in one another’s lives. Entering this space and writing in these ways has spilled over into our academic writing, our mothering, and our work as educators. Reading McKittrick was like reading someone who had been freed. We owe

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it to ourselves to create the event-spaces that allow our academic selves to be freed—freed into ourselves, our ways of knowing, our ways of being. Throughout this chapter, we cite the misfit, ill-fitting academics who have come before us—women and men full of wisdom, but not full of the shit of checklists and accolades that have come to be recognized in academia as the hallmarks of rigorous scholarship. 4

Speculating Presents (Presence) If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, not on going somewhere, but on being where you are. So, I stretch out, close my eyes, and listen to the rain. (Kimmerer, 2103, p. 296)

This week and moving forward, I am making an effort to have game night twice a week, read books, and practice sight words with my children each night. I’ve got to do ambition in this way. My family comes first. My greatest fear is reflecting and realizing that I didn’t give them enough of my time. “When you pick up your child in the morning or put them to bed, give them a smile that only you know what it means. (I love you, and I am doing all of this to make certain that your future is secure). Read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (Carle, 1997) one more time. Extend the cuddling time. Always smile when you speak to them unless it’s discipline. They want to see their mother happy.” I appreciated reading this portion of Dr. Thurmond’s letter. It’s reassuring as I continue to speculate the when, and internally justify the why and how of my presence as an academic mother. I write a present Where between meetings I walk the yard and check for eggs Where/when I pull weeds and pinch the suckers off my tomato plants A future/present where I bike with my daughter to school We challenge ourselves to ride with no hands from the stop sign to the end of the road She is better than me And at the same time, it all feels precarious I can have this future becoming if I publish enough in the right journals If I get that grant

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If I don’t act too emotional with my dean If I write the book chapter And at the same time, I tell myself that I am going to be fine I will get tenure I know I am doing what is expected Yet I can’t sleep the night after I cry in the Dean’s office Wondering what futures I wrote in that moment I said, “Hello,” and he started to introduce himself. I said, “Oh we met yesterday morning with the tiles.” He said, “Oh you were really giving off the soccer mom vibe. I didn’t recognize you.” The arrangement of me, in a White female presenting body with my kids made me less visible as someone who might end up as a guest at the VIP dinner, as an academic? As an intellectual? I became soccer mom to him, maybe I was even a Karen when I drove into the restricted area in my SUV…. The SUV and the sweatshirt, the missing bento box, the ceramic tiles that weigh us down as we deliver them. These materials all create event-spaces that make us recognizable or unrecognizable as academic or mother or soccer mom or difficult or angry or intellectual. “Unlike Crenshaw’s accident at the traffic intersection, the focus here is not on whether there is a crime taking place, nor determining who is at fault, but rather asking, what are the affective conditions necessary for the event-space to unfold?” (Puar, 2012, p. 61). What are the affective conditions necessary for a different event-space of academic motherhood to unfold? During moments of writing and conversations about doing ambition as an academic mother, it is natural to reference the challenges in a space of mutuality and support. It feels good to do so. I forget to explicitly state my gratitude for it all. Perhaps it’s easier for me (us?) to complain about the

Figure 5.5 A handwritten letter recounting a touching moment when an ­academic mother was reminded to take a moment to breathe and be easy by her daughter

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Figure 5.6 A handwritten letter chronicling the strategies employed by an ­academic mother to assert her authority and influence while teaching

infinite number of things to do and the weight we bear on our shoulders. Doing ambition differently requires us to be easy. I have been saying to myself for a couple of years now – I am tired of being strong. But I was wondering today if that is not it–I am tired of being strong in this way. The strength that is not allowed to falter or rest or be off guard. To be easy is to live authentically and unapologetically, free from walking the tightrope of being “too this” or “too that.” I was thinking today about how to be easy in my strength. Both on my bike to relax my shoulders and smile and not push so hard, just be in the moment of pedaling without striving. I was walking down the street, and something just seemed to get settled with the grant. I felt good. It showed. An older Black man I see regularly when I walk commented as he passed me, ‘you’ve got a nice easy walk.’ I don’t think it was my usual walk. I did feel easy, relaxed, like all would be ok. How might we be easy in ourselves? Is that the work of unknowing that McKittrick (2021) suggests: unknowing to let go of expectations of self so that we may be in the present? To tell ourselves different stories of ourselves that we can then parse through and decide what is worth keeping. We follow Springgay and Freedman (2010) among many bold others as we “shift our attention from motherhood as biological, selfless, and existing prior to culture to a practice that is always incomplete, indeterminable, and vulnerable”

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(p. 25). The promise of happiness that comes from other imaginary and perfect ways of being good mother (Ahmed, 2010) have not paid their dues, or they would tell us that we have not paid ours. We found when we let go of expectations for our writings, there was joy and unexpected encounters. We let go of it having to be about something. “When we are fascinated by something, we do not always know why. What captures your attention, causing you to write, to express yourself, might not have the crispness or the edges of an about” (Ahmed, 2021, p. 305). What if we let go of the aboutness of academic motherhood and what it is supposed to look like? Barad (2007) said emergence happens, “that time and space...are iteratively reconfigured through each intra-action, thereby making it impossible to differentiate in any absolute sense between creation and renewal, beginning and returning, continuity and discontinuity, here and there, past and future” (p. 2). The letters, musings, and conversations worked to reconfigure us through this event-space—iteratively through each intra-action. Kaur (2021) uses the word “porous” to describe intra-actions in love: “you must keep the borders of your heart porous in order to love well” (p. 42). We extend this into academic mothering. The porous nature of a mothering heart is not, as academia would have us believe, a detriment to scholarship, because this porosity allows one to stop seeking that promised future and to be in the “potentialized present” (Berlant, 2011, p. 263) as it emerges. And yet a porous heart necessarily invites precarity, the very inheritance we do not wish to pass on. Perhaps precarity is not so cruel. We (re)appropriate (restory, rewrite, rework) academic mother, fantasizing. Even if we begin only with pinpricks in the fabric of the lies we tell ourselves. Notes 1 All right-aligned texts are from the authors’ musings from handwritten letters and/or writing sessions. We organized our work on this project as a purposeful push back against productivity driven notions of writing and work. We chose to read fiction and to meet without an agenda. We spent the first 15–20 minutes of each meeting free writing together. We purposefully do not list the authors of these texts or distinguish them as belonging to one or the other of us. They are individual, and they are collective. 2 While we have concerns that the identity markers that we list here are reductive and problematic in some ways, we also recognize and received feedback that readers might want to know more about who we are. We indulge. The academic mothers in this project include: Tynetta Jenkins (a 30-year-old, Black woman of part-Vietnamese ancestry, and mother of three elementary aged children), Erica Warren (a 39-year-old, biracial-Latina, mother of two children aged 7 and 6), Elaine Thurmond (a 58-year-old, Black, assistant professor and mother of three adult children), and Susan Cannon (a 45-year-old, White, assistant professor and mother of two teenaged children).

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3 Images included throughout the chapter capture some of the back-and-forth musings between the authors. Vulnerabilities which traveled through the post, perhaps to (re)kindle intimacies of longtime friends.

References Ahmed, S. (2010). The promise of happiness. Duke University Press. Ahmed, S. (2021) Complaint! Duke University Press. Agarwal, P. (2021). (M)otherhood: On the choices of being a woman. Canongate Books Ltd. Augustine, J. M., Prickett, K. C., & Negraia, D. (2018). Doing it all? Mothers’ college enrollment, time use, and affective well-being. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 80(4), 963–974. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12477 Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel Optimism. Duke University Press. Butler, O. (1993/2019). Parable of the sower. Grand Central Publishing. Carle, E. (1997). Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? Puffin. de Freitas, E., & Sinclair, N. (2014). Mathematics and the body: Material entanglements in the classroom. Cambridge University Press. Dixon-Román, E. J. (2017). Inheriting possibility: Social reproduction and quantification in education. University of Minnesota Press. Glaser, E. (2021). Motherhood: A manifesto. Fourth Estate. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucence. Duke University Press. hooks, b. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center (2nd ed.). South End Press. Ingold, T. (2021). Correspondences. Polity. Kaur, V. (2021). See no stranger: A memoir and manifesto of revolutionary love. One World. Kimmerer, R. W. (2103). Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed. McKittrick, K. (2021). Dear science and other stories. Duke University Press. Oxford English Dictionary (OED). (n.d.). precarious, adj. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://www-oed-com.libdata.lib.ua.edu/view/Entry/149548 Pollock, D. (1993). Telling bodies, performing birth. Columbia. Puar, J. (2012). “I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Becoming-intersectional in assemblage theory. PhiloSOPHIA: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 2(1), 49–66. Springgay, S., & Freedman, D. M. (2010). Breasted bodies as pedagogies of excess: Towards a materialist theory of becoming m/other. In J. A. Sandlin, B. D. Schultz, & J. Burdick (Eds.), Handbook of public pedagogy: Education and learning beyond schooling (pp. 351–363). Taylor & Francis. Woolf, V. (1929/2012). A room of one’s own. Wordsworth.

CHAPTER 6

“I’m Not Your Superwoman”

An Exploration of the Strong Black Woman Trope and How It Affected My Doctoral Journey A. C. Johnson Abstract The purpose of this autoethnographic study is to bring more awareness to the ways that the Strong Black Woman (SBW) trope has influenced Black women mothers in academia. I chose autoethnography because I analyzed my lived experience, using Patricia Hill Collins’ (2002) “Matriarch” stereotype, and discussed how that experience is connected to cultural norms (Gallardo et al., 2009). This stereotype questions Black women’s role as mothers and blames them for the downfall of their households, and on a larger scale, their community. Due to this undue pressure, Black women mothers feel that they must be strong at all times. Within this book chapter, I explore how the trope affected me during the pandemic while I was on the doctoral journey. In addition, the data for this book chapter derived from my private journals. I selected journal entries from March 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, to May 2021, the completion of my doctoral studies. The analysis of the journal entries revealed how the SBW trope caused various emotions including guilt and fear. However, I also felt affirmed by other Black women. Although I did not allow myself to express my needs as a mother, when I needed them, Black women were there. The SBW trope is still prevalent, but Black women are continuing to fight against it and telling our stories. I hope that my story will help change the narrative about how Black women mothers can be strong and resilient, and we are also vulnerable.

Keywords Black woman – autoethnography – first-generation students – Strong Black Woman – Matriarch stereotype

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1 Introduction The pandemic was—and quite frankly, still is—rough, to say the least. We’re having to act as if it was just a time that most of us had to work from home, and now we go back to “normal.” However, there was damage that was done, and we, collectively, are still trying to move forward and deal with the aftermath. As I reflect on this time, I think about how my family and I were fortunate to have one another, but there were times when I felt very alone. I was in the thick of writing my dissertation when we were sent home due to the growing number of cases of COVID-19. Before we were sent home, I defended my proposal so I was trying to submit my IRB application to begin recruiting for the study, a study about women like me: first-generation, Black women doctoral students attending Historically White Institutions (HWI s) in the U.S. South. I had to recruit while the nation was chaotic—not only due to the pandemic and the many deaths we were witnessing, but also due to the uncertainty of the future and the unjust murders of Black Americans.1 It was difficult being in this space of writing and needing to get my degree done while being a caregiver and mother. It felt like two worlds were colliding. I needed support. Although I could speak to peers about the writing process and we leaned on one another about the horrendous racialized injustices occurring, it was challenging for me to be vulnerable enough to discuss motherhood and being the decision-maker and protector of my family. Receiving this type of support required vulnerability; however, as a Black woman, I didn’t always feel like I could be open enough to express my needs. So, I used my journal to help me process my feelings. Even though journaling helped, as a Black woman and mother, this notion of being the strong Black woman was prevalent in my life. Displaying any emotion was considered weak or problematic. This idea was started by the majoritarian culture (Collins, 2022) as Black women had their emotions suppressed and were silenced when they were enslaved. This silencing was also an act of survival because showing any emotion would get them or their families killed. Even after Black people were freed, this notion of the Black woman mother having to be emotionally resilient and silent about their needs continued to be a part of their image. Even now, Black women are still seen with this damaging trope. This trope continues to hurt Black women in society, and in a smaller scale, it infiltrates Black women’s family life and social circles, including mine. Thoughts constantly ran through my head: I have to be strong for my family and take care of my parents. I have to be strong as a mother. Can’t let my child see cry or openly struggle.

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I have to hold myself together when making decisions for & with my mom and daughter, especially since Daddy left this Earth. I’ve worn this mask for so long to protect myself and my loved ones, but it is becoming too much to bear. Needless to say, I felt a range of emotions throughout this time: guilt, anger, and a heavy burden of responsibility to care for my family. In this autoethnographic book chapter, I examine those feelings and my lived experiences by using my journal entries from the time of the pandemic. I include the entries and my reflections to add more context. In this way, I focus on how the Strong Black Woman (SBW) trope affected my decision-making in multiple areas of my life, especially motherhood and my doctoral journey. 2

The Strong Black Woman Trope

I use Patricia Hill Collins’ “Matriarch” stereotype as a way to look within and through my lived experiences as a Black woman mother and an academic, specifically during my time as a doctoral student. The Strong Black Woman (SBW) trope was created by the white patriarchal society to oppress Black women (­Collins, 2002). This trope is used to control the ways that Black women are seen. Black women are viewed as “aggressive, assertive women,” and this trope holds them responsible for the downfall of their children and communities (Collins, 2002). The SBW trope also “interprets African American mothers as emotionally resilient providers and caregivers who need no help, least of all from men” (Dow, 2015, p. 37). In this way, Black women are seen as “superhuman” (Patton & Croom, 2017) as in, they are only viewed as strong, tough, and can take on everything their families and communities need, absent of weakness or assistance from anyone. Due to this image, Black women are scrutinized, especially if they show any emotion, need, and even pain. They2 are no longer seen as human. This scrutiny attempts to cause Black women to question themselves, with the hope that they will lack self-confidence and, ultimately, cannot confront oppression (Collins, 2002). Even within their academic journeys, this scrutiny causes Black women graduate students to navigate health concerns as they strive to be strong while constantly battling problematic behavior such as microaggressions (Dortch, 2016; Johnson, 2021; Jones et al., 2013; Patton & Harper, 2013; Patterson-Stephens et al., 2017). Their other identities are also under the lens of the SBW trope, particularly if their role is also as a mother. This ideology places Black women in a challenging

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place, because if this trope is internalized, they see themselves as failures if they need any form of help (Dow, 2015). This internalization affects their well-­ being and adds to the already present psychological stressors (Johnson, 2021; ­Shavers & Moore, 2014) during their doctoral program. This pressure and scrutiny also cause them to be silenced from opening up about their struggles and feelings (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2007; Haynes, 2019; Johnson, 2021). Living up to these damaging images of being a SBW has produced negative consequences (­Harris-Lacewell, 2001), even when it comes to confiding in one another. When Black women attempt to escape from this trope and use it to create their own narratives (Browdy, 2017), their action has been met with resistance. Therefore, I use Collins’ matriarch/SBW to explore how this trope affected my doctoral journey as a Black woman, an academic, and a mother during the worldwide pandemic. I acknowledge that I do not represent all Black mothers’ lived experiences for the duration of their doctoral journey. However, I hope that I can inspire other Black women to recognize this trope when it shows up, call out these controlling images, and continue to take back our narratives. 3

Recreating My Story

In this chapter, I explore the various elements that contribute to my roles as a Black woman mother, a caregiver of a parent, and as a doctoral student. I examine how internalizing what it means to be the SBW affected how I approached these roles during the pandemic as well. I refer to my personal journals as a way of critically examining myself and reflecting on my mindset and the events through the pandemic. I write about them in retrospect and “interrogate why [my] story is valid and legitimate as a research subject” (Kim, 2015, p. 124). Moreover, as an auto-ethnographer, it is my responsibility to “[engage] in a critical examination of the act of conducting research of the self in relation to others…and the self as a research subject.” (Kim, 2015, p. 124). As the research subject and auto-­ ethnographer, I cannot separate myself from this examination; therefore, I use my journal entries to reflect, remember, and to analyze how the SBW controlling image affected my roles in relation to others. Additionally, I document my reflections about the entries in italics as a way to distinguish those thoughts from the entries. My reflections were included to provide more context for my story. 3.1 The Journals, Reflections, and Story Due to the specificity of the time, I only review my entries from March 2020 to May 2021. The journals I use are my daily gratitude journals. I have always kept journals, but I started writing in one daily in 2017 because I needed something

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to help me see the beauty in my everyday life. However, my journals include thoughts that aren’t simply about showing gratitude. I write about whatever I am feeling that day as well. Documenting my everyday life has been cathartic. I use my journal entries as a way of remembering and recalling during the time of the pandemic. Due to the nature of personal journals, my entries could not possibly include everything that happened. Because these are my thoughts, there was no need for additional details in the journals as I knew what happened and what I was thinking. In order to show a more complete narrative, I used the journals, along with my reflections, to help recreate my story. 4

Emotional Rollercoaster

When I returned to my journals, the entries revealed an array of emotions. I felt guilt, fear, exhaustion, and anger. Along with those feelings, I navigated a period of depression and burnout that caused me to question whether I belonged in the academy. I had a lot of guilt that continued to show throughout the entries. There were times when I had to make tough decisions for my family, and I blamed myself for the lack of resources we had. I blamed myself when my family became sick or did not make the “right” choices. I felt incredibly guilty when I recruited for my dissertation study during a time when people were dying from COVID-19, and I saw violent injustices done to my people. Then, I was asking other Black women to share their stories about their doctoral journeys during an emotional time for Black Americans. Those incredible Black women shared with me their triumphs and talked about their challenges with racism at the HWI s as well. That sharing was difficult because of what we were seeing done to our people, but it was also difficult because the process of sharing required a level of vulnerability with one another. Throughout this time, the Strong Black Woman trope was prevalent and displayed in various ways. I did not want to fail. I did not want to confide in others about certain areas of my life. Having to be strong for everyone was a heavy load to carry. My expectations of myself were influenced by who I thought I had to be for my family and for myself. 4.1 Guilt, Fear, and Being the “Responsible” One My main concern during the pandemic was my family’s health, and I could not imagine how I would feel if anything happened to my mom or my daughter. I was so obsessed with this thought that I constantly got tested and made my daughter get tested too. My family was my responsibility, and I was the decision-maker.

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Everyone started receiving word that schools were closing around midMarch 2020. On March 15th, I wrote about how the schools were shutting down temporarily [or so we thought]: “We got the news that schools will close. We won’t return ‘til March 30th. [My daughter] will be home this week for the rest of the semester. This virus is affecting everyone and everything.” At this time, I elected myself as the person who would leave the house to buy our necessities. My daughter had not been sent home yet from college but would arrive a few days later. My mom was immunocompromised, so I made sure I was the person to go. On this day, I tried to get groceries, but “[The grocery store] didn’t have enough food for the customers,” so I went back home with nothing. The stores struggled with the demands of food due to everyone being scared and purchasing items for their homes. There weren’t enough resources during this time. Even though this was not something I could control, I still felt terrified of what this might mean for the future and questioned how I would get the resources for my family. Within the next few weeks, we were in lockdown as the number of deaths from the virus increased every day. It was devastating to watch, and I felt hopeless. I constantly told my mom and daughter about new cases and lectured them about wearing masks when they left the house. This fear fueled my anxiety when my mom told me she wanted to visit a family member: April 6th We’re still under the shelter in place [order] because of COVID. Mama was trying to go to [my aunt’s] but [my cousin] tested positive and is quarantined. I felt like the parent and had to remind her that she could get sick and bring it home anyway. I’m glad and grateful she didn’t go and I could convince her to stay home. Reflection: Even though this entry seemed like everything worked out well, I distinctly remember that I was angry with my mom that day for risking her health to go visit my aunt. I let my anger and fear get the best of me. I kept asking myself why does it seem like I’m the parent and the only person thinking in this situation? I felt that no one in the house wanted to take this virus as seriously as I did. I was almost in tears, thinking about how my mom could die because of the visit. My mom knew how badly I did not want her to go, but she left anyway. After a few minutes passed, however, she walked back in the house. She simply said she decided not to go and went to her room. I knew I overreacted and hurt her feelings. She did not express this to me, but there was a look of defeat on her face when she came back inside. I let my anger—which was really fear—get the best of me.

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Not only was I scared, but I constantly made references about finances; that was another stressor because I was the provider. I continued to write about a lack of funds, but I never asked for help. I couldn’t. My mom had a limited income, and I did not want to place the burden of these worries on her. My daughter worked outside of the home, but I did not want her to do so as I was afraid that she would get sick. She insisted since she wanted to keep her position, however. As her mother, I felt that I should’ve made more money so that she wouldn’t worry about working. Later that month, I found out that my financial aid was not approved for my final year in my program. I was awarded a fellowship for that last year, but it would not cover all of our expenses. I took another temporary position to ensure we had enough money as I would not dare ask for help. In the following months, as a family, we decided to allow my daughter to return to her college campus. I attended presentations on how the college prepared for them to return, and she assured me she would be safe. In hindsight, I held guilt about this too. When I moved her into her campus apartment, I meticulously cleaned every inch of it, even more so than I typically would. All the while, I kept thinking that I should keep her home and safe with me; nonetheless, I always included her when it was time to make decisions about her education, and she was adamant about returning as she did not flourish with online learning. She argued that she would perform better if she could sit in the classroom and would wear her mask at all times. Her dad lived near the city where she would be, so I trusted that she would be okay. Everything was fine until she made the decision to hang out with friends in a crowded place. She called and explained that she wasn’t feeling well and that a friend of hers had the virus. We decided that she needed to get tested as soon as possible. Her test was positive, but fortunately, it was not a severe case: November 9th Grateful that [my daughter] seems to be OK but she’s contracted COVID. I was blessed to have delivered some groceries and medicine to her today. I’m really bothered that I can’t be there with her. I’m grateful she’s OK. Reflection: I was very upset that I couldn’t be there with my daughter during the time that she had COVID. She was sick and weak. She could hardly go to the door to get the groceries and medicine I sent her. I kept begging her to let me come to take care of her, but she did not want me to catch it and pass it to my mother. Although emotions ran high and I wanted to be there, I also understood that if I went and I caught the virus too, my mother could catch it from me. Due to her

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age and other health issues, we were scared, and I would never be able to live with that guilt. I called my friend, who’s a medical doctor, and she instructed me what to do. My daughter had to quarantine for two weeks, and she reported her case to the school. We called her roommate, who was out of town, and told her as well. She could not return to the apartment until after my daughter’s quarantine was over, and the school came to clean the unit. I kept thinking that I shouldn’t have let her return to the campus. This feeling of guilt consumed me, and I felt like it was my fault. My daughter finally left the school after quarantining for ten days and came home for the rest of the semester. My emotions were high during these months, and I wanted so badly to protect and provide for my family. As a mother, I felt that I had made some poor decisions and felt responsible for my mom and daughter’s health and well-­ being. What I see in these entries is my own reflection of how I blame myself for situations that were not always controllable; however, I still felt I had failed my mom and daughter because I could not shield them from the virus. I allowed my fear and anxiety about our precarious situation to take control of me. 4.2 A Strange Combination of Affirmation, Exhaustion, and Anger Aside from guilt, I also experienced affirmation from other Black women, exhaustion, and anger. I recognized that it was a privilege to pursue a doctorate, but I questioned whether it was worth the sacrifices, and whether I really belonged. Also, as mentioned previously, there was civil unrest as Black people witnessed others from our communities being murdered due to police brutality and racism. I leaned on my Black women friends, but many of us felt hopeless and sad. Two of my friends, who were in the same program, and I communicated and supported one another. We were all writing, either for research or for our dissertations.3 Our people were being heartlessly murdered, and there were marches and riots happening, on top of a world-wide pandemic. Then, here I was worried about it all in addition to stressing about interviewing for my dissertation. It felt so selfish because there were larger, more important issues happening around me, yet I needed to write. Moreover, because my study was about Black women’s experiences, I felt even more guilt and responsibility as I had to ask them to talk about their experiences while they were also going through a pandemic and witnessing this shit show (Johnson et al., in press). Because they were students too, they understood, but I still carried that with me. It was hard asking them to relive their own experiences at HWI s. We talked about the microaggressions and isolation they felt, along with the ways that

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they challenged white supremacy and fought against the stereotypes by affirming themselves and their culture (Johnson, 2021), they were extremely supportive of the work I was doing. Being encouraged by them, but also feeling guilty for asking them to share with me was a beautiful place to be in. As months went on, I noticed that I became increasingly tired. On July 3rd, 2020, I wrote, “I’m really tired of academia,” and other entries showed how I tried to persevere though I was unmotivated: September 3rd Today I wanted to just work through the discomfort. Most days I do this, but I feel like whatever will help me write right now, I’m gonna have to just do it. I don’t know if this is the place for me. At this time, I was emotionally drained from the world’s lack of care regarding Black lives and what my Black women peers experienced was hard to digest. On top of this, I still had to be responsible for my family. A few days go by, and I wrote about feeling isolated and not being able to talk to anyone about my deeper feelings. I began to question my own thoughts: September 9th The thing is I can’t tell if I’m just depressed or this is actually reality. I’m grateful for my mom and [my daughter]. I just wish I could trust my thoughts more… September 12th I feel alone and I’m not sure if it’s because I may be depressed or is it because that’s the reality of it. Also I’ve got to be honest with [my dissertation chair] and let her know that this dissertation is fucking with my mental health. Writing a dissertation is an isolating process, and those entries show how the pressure from the previous months started to interfere with my mental health. The friends I had in the program were supportive and affirming, but there were thoughts, especially about family matters and motherhood, I just could not share. I kept those dark thoughts to myself for fear I would be seen as not being able to handle the pressure. I also did not want to burden anyone, so I carried it around with me. The next few days, I continued to write about these dark feelings and guilt began to settle in again: September 13th I feel guilty for the things that I’ve written. I felt so alone and isolated… maybe my expectations are too high… I can’t be vulnerable.

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Reflection: I started feeling guilty about my feelings. It’s only now that I can reflect on that time and understand why. I did not want to give myself space to have these feelings. I wasn’t supposed to say these things and feel this way. I judged myself for being human. I also felt I couldn’t be 100% vulnerable with other women around me as I saw a reflection of myself in them. We all had to be strong and resilient. After a couple of days passed, I wrote about how I tried to bring myself out of this place: September 17th I can see some slight changes in how I’m feeling… I went outside and stood in the sun for a few minutes, took my shoes off and let my feet touch the ground. I used grounding4 (Chevalier et al., 2012), which was my way of disconnecting from the digital world. For me, grounding helps to combat my depression and anxiety. I must note that I prepared for my dissertation defense during this time as well; therefore, I was under a tremendous amount of stress that had been building up. After my defense, I thought I would feel relief. Almost a week after my defense, I found myself crying for a long time. I held myself together for too long. I did not recognize how exhausted and emotionally drained I had become, and I had not allowed myself to release these emotions. I had to be strong. Being a doctoral student, I rarely rested. There was always something to handle, to write, to apply for, to check, etc. It was a never-ending to-do list. At times, this constant going and thinking and reading and writing, left me feeling empty. Sometimes I couldn’t even think of one thing I was grateful for that day: February 2nd I don’t fucking know [what I’m grateful for] I continued with some thoughts about academia: I’m giving up. I’m going to graduate in four months, and I’m too tired to even try. I feel like my life won’t be better than where I am now and that makes me very sad At this time, I was completely exhausted, but graduation was near. I needed a job, and I had not finished my dissertation edits even though I defended almost four months prior. On February 7th, 2021, I wrote about my doctoral journey and how I did not see a positive outcome waiting for me:

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I feel like a failure. This PhD did nothing to help my decision to do something with my life… I feel empty and unmotivated. People say it’s worth it, but is it really? I’m not even feeling like I’m being my best self. I recognized that I was not my best self during this time. My “best self” meant that I was taking care of myself, and I would be in a happier place; however, the unknown of my future, the emotions of the doctoral journey, the affirmations, guilt, and anger I felt while the protests were happening was confusing and caused an explosion of emotions. As I read and reread these entries and recreate my story, guilt was the main emotion. This feeling of guilt I am sure was shared by many who were responsible for their families during the pandemic; however, the act of not asking for assistance or sharing my fears and feelings with my family stemmed from the idea that I had to be strong for them. Even though my mom and daughter would have helped me do anything, I was afraid to ask them as this would be seen as me not being able to handle everything. Although I had peers and friends who I leaned on because they understood my struggles as a doctoral student, I kept my feelings about my role as a mother to myself. These internalized thoughts of who I should be and how strong I should be were harmful and a disservice to myself during an already stressful time. 5

Why Does This Matter?

While reviewing the journal entries, one element of my journey that this process helped me uncover was the emotions I felt. I felt guilty about pursuing a doctorate; about asking other Black women to tell me about their experiences; and about my decisions as a mother and caretaker. The internalized SBW trope caused me to feel responsible for my family in ways that were beyond my control (e.g., their health, the lack of resources, their choices, etc.). Collins (2002) discusses how the SBW is oppressive to Black women and how it places the blame on them if their families “fail” (Dow, 2015). This fear of failing my family resulted in me enduring constant psychological stress and added to my exhaustion as a doctoral student. Also, analyzing my journal entries and recreating my story made me reflect on how I chose to hide my true feelings from peers, friends, and family and the inner turmoil during the pandemic. On one hand, I wasn’t willing to be vulnerable enough to confide in my friends about all of the weight and pressure I felt as a Black woman mother. In this way, the SBW trope affected me in that I saw myself as a failure if I elected to show any real emotion about my homelife. On the other hand, as a Black woman scholar/doctoral student, I had a

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sense of belonging (Strayhorn, 2018) with my Black women friends in my doctoral program (Johnson et al., in press) and leaned on them about the process. Even the Black women who participated in my dissertation study affirmed me and encouraged me to keep going. In these ways, I was affirmed, and we were affirmed by one another. These realizations and experiences matter because even if the SBW trope is damaging to Black women, we still are surviving and thriving with the support of one another. Although I didn’t always allow myself to open up about my needs as a mother, when I needed them, Black women were there for me. The SBW trope is still very much alive, but Black women are continuing to fight against it and telling our stories. I do not want to generalize Black women’s experiences by stating theirs are also my own; however, I hope that my story will help change the narrative about how Black women mothers can be strong and resilient and vulnerable. Notes 1 In 2020, several Black Americans (e.g., George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many more) were murdered. Floyd’s and Arbery’s deaths were captured on video and were extremely traumatic to watch unfold. Additionally, Floyd’s and Taylor’s murders were committed by police officers. Taylor was murdered while lying in her bed. All of the murders were racially motivated and led to protests against these injustices. 2 To better explain the concept, I use “they” in this section to discuss the trope, and the effects of the trope on this group of women. I also use “we” when I am including my experiences later in the chapter. 3 I co-wrote a book chapter with my sista scholars about this experience. Please see the chapter, “If it mattered to them, it mattered to me”: How Friendship Shaped Three Black Women’s Doctoral Experience During a Pandemic and Racial Injustice (Johnson et al., in press) for more about how we dealt with these tensions during the pandemic. 4 Grounding (also called “Earthing”) is a technique that reconnects people to the Earth/nature for psychological benefits. One way to do this is to walk barefoot on the grass and spend time in the sun.

References Beauboeuf-Lafontant, T. (2007). You have to show strength: An exploration of gender, race, and depression. Gender & Society, 21(1), 28–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0891243206294108 Browdy, R. W. (2017). Naming ourselves for ourselves: Black women theorizing their identities as everyday rhetorical practice [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Michigan State University. https://doi.org/10.25335/M5SX9X

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Chevalier, G., Sinatra, S. T., Oschman, J. L., Sokal, K., & Sokal, P. (2012). Earthing: Health implications of reconnecting the human body to the Earth’s surface electrons. Journal of Environmental and Public Health, 2012, 291541. https://doi.org/10.1155/ 2012/291541 Collins, P. H. (2002). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge. Dow, D. M. (2015). Negotiating “the welfare queen” and “the strong Black woman”: African American middle-class mothers’ work and family perspectives. Sociological Perspectives, 58(1), 36–55. Dortch, D. (2016). The strength from within: A phenomenological study examining the academic self-efficacy of African American women in doctoral studies. The Journal of Negro Education, 85(3), 350–364. Harris-Lacewell, M. (2001). No place to rest: African American political attitudes and the myth of Black women’s strength. Women & Politics, 23(3), 1–33. https://doi.org/ 10.1300/J014v23n03_01 Haynes, T. R. (2019). Dropping the cape of strength: Phenomenological exploration of Black superwomen’s lived experiences and perceptions of help-seeking for psychological distress (27785710) [Doctoral dissertation, North Carolina State University]. ProQuest. Johnson, A. C. (2021). “I deserve to be here more than anybody else”: First-generation African American women doctoral students’ experiences at Southern HWI s (28320633) [Doctoral dissertation, The University of Alabama]. ProQuest. Johnson, A. C., Campbell, E., & Summerville, K. (in press). “If it mattered to them, it mattered to me”: How friendship shaped three Black women’s doctoral experiences during a pandemic and racial injustice. In S. Fries-Britt & B. Turner Kelly (Eds.), Black women navigating the doctoral journey: Student peer support, mentorship, and success in the academy. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003394648 Jones, T. B., Wilder, J., & Osborne-Lampkin, L. (2013). Employing a Black feminist approach to doctoral advising: Preparing Black women for the professoriate. The Journal of Negro Education, 82(3), 326–338. Kim, J. H. (2015). Understanding narrative inquiry: The crafting and analysis of stories as research. Sage. Patterson-Stephens, S. M., Lane, T. B., & Vital, L. M. (2017). Black doctoral women: Exploring barriers and facilitators of success in graduate education. Academic Perspectives in Higher Education, 3(1), 157–180. https://doi.org/10.32674/hepe.v3i1.15 Patton, L. D., & Croom, N. N. (Eds.). (2017). Critical perspectives on Black women and college success. Taylor & Francis. Patton, L. D., & Harper, S. R. (2003). Mentoring relationships among African American women in graduate and professional schools. New directions for student services, 2003(104), 67–78. https://doi.org/10.1002/ss.108

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Shavers, M. C., & Moore III, J. L. (2014). The double-edged sword: Coping and resiliency strategies of African American women enrolled in doctoral programs at predominately white institutions. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 35(3), 15–38. https:// doi.org/10.5250/fronjwomestud.35.3.0015 Strayhorn, T. L. (2018). College students’ sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students. Routledge.

CHAPTER 7

The Miscarrying Mother Kelsey H. Guy Abstract As a millennial woman, I am right in the age sweet spot where announcements for pregnancies are rampant throughout my social media feeds. Gender reveals and lavish baby showers dominate my scrolling, and while the soft color palettes will often temper everyday stresses, there was a time in my life not so long ago where seeing these posts brought nothing but pain. Miscarriages, unlike viable pregnancies, are not accompanied by parties and themed decorations. Miscarriages are rarely announced at all. The miscarrying mother often suffers in silence, isolation, and uncertainty, and during the Covid-19 pandemic, all three were compounded. In 2020, I suffered a miscarriage with my first pregnancy. This piece explores miscarriage through my own experience that occurred not only while I was a full-time doctoral student and instructor in higher education, but also in the midst of a global pandemic. Using Rosi Braidotti’s (2020) notion of too-much-ness and a cathartic self-interview, I confront my miscarriage experience head-on, provoking emotional turmoil as well as developing closure. My goal for this chapter is to, above all, bring the topic of miscarriage into the light and provide a sense of community, a metaphorical “I see you,” for other women who have suffered pregnancy loss. The grief is suffocating, isolating, and unbearable at times, but we can work through the too-much-ness together.

Keywords miscarriage – higher education – academia – Covid-19 – uncertainty

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The Call

“I’m so sorry to have to tell you this over the phone, but it sounds like you’ve had a miscarriage.” All breath and warmth leave my body. I had called the doctor for reassurance that everything was fine, and now my world is crumbling. I push through the

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tightness in my throat as I ask my next question; an unnecessary one because I already knew the answer: “Are you sure?” “I’m 95% confident that’s what’s happened. You can come in for an ultrasound to be absolutely positive, but a lot of women don’t want to…” She pauses, but I know what she’s about to say. “It can be really hard seeing all the expecting moms in the waiting room.” I can hear the pain in her voice, and I know this conversation is difficult for her, but no one is more ready to get off the phone than me. “No,” I say, my voice breaking, “you’re right, I don’t think I want to do that. If you’re that confident, then I’ll take your word for it.” “I’m so sorry,” she says. She briefly hesitates, then proceeds to tell me what I can expect over the next couple of weeks as well as her recommendations for physical recovery, but I’m barely listening. All that I can register is the biting December wind on my face, my cold bare feet on the back porch, and the desperate, desperate need to cry. Dragging myself back to the present, I shakily thank the doctor, no longer able to hold back the tears, and I hang up the phone. I go back inside my house, sit on the bed, and I let the immense waves of fresh, jagged grief crash over me, my harsh sobs only pausing when I draw breath. As I yield to the raw emotion, I cannot help but think, “What am I going to do now?” 2 Introduction There are no announcements made for miscarriages like there are for pregnancies. There are no cute, seasonally appropriate posts on Facebook and no personalized mugs for surprised, soon-to-be grandparents. Rather than deciding when to tell people, as is the case with a viable pregnancy, the question when a miscarriage occurs is if to tell people. All too often, the answer is “no.” Deciding whether to tell people is just one of many uncertainties that comes with a miscarriage, and the list of unanswered questions grows longer when that miscarriage takes place in Academia.1 My own miscarriage happened while I was a doctoral student in the middle of coursework. Now, I am still a doctoral student, but one who is much more seasoned and currently in the throes of dissertation writing. As such, my tone and writing style reflect my position as an active researcher who is synthesizing and generating scholarship. From that positioning in higher education, I can tell you from experience: not only is the suffering woman struggling with not knowing how her body will react to the miscarriage, if she will be able to try for another baby, if she wants to try for another baby, or how to tell her partner, but a suffering woman in

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Academia is also wondering how she will put on a happy face for her students, how she will make that publication deadline, or how she will get through the presentation at the next conference. The narrative that begins this chapter is one of my own experiences. In late November 2020, after an incredibly difficult year, I had a bright spot of joy: after trying to conceive for over a year, I was finally pregnant with my first child. I immediately began thinking of ways to tell my husband, as well as my parents, for whom this would be their first grandchild. While I managed to not immediately call my mother, I only made it about 10 minutes after my husband got home to blab the good news. I thought the timing was perfect; I would be able to order some personalized gifts for Christmas, and it would be the perfect reveal… Cut to December 11, 2020, a day that will always live in my memory as being one of the saddest of my life. I was experiencing some spotting, but Google told me that was pretty normal for early pregnancy, and I was only about 7 weeks along at this point. Just to be sure, I called my OBGYN. My first appointment was scheduled for the next week, but I wanted to ease my mind. Instead I was, to put it honestly, shattered. I experienced two extremes in the span of a few weeks: the highest high of seeing that double line on the pregnancy test, and the lowest low of hearing that all the lovely things I had been picturing would not come to pass. This book centers the subject of mothering in Academia, but it would not be complete without recognizing the experiences of those whose mothering journey is brief, temporary, and oftentimes, unbearably painful. 3 Too-Much-Ness This chapter was inspired by and will consequently use Rosi Braidotti’s (2020) notion of ‘too-much-ness’ as the theoretical framework. While Braidotti did not coin the phrase, I do specify that I will be operating under her definition, as it is the most relevant and useful for the current chapter and the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Too-much-ness as a concept can and does apply to multiple situations (Merriam-Webster, n.d.), but because Braidotti does specifically reference the term in relation to COVID-19 and the new world it has created, her definition provides the strongest connection between a broad term and the specific context that shapes its understanding. Braidotti (2020) writes that too-much-ness is when “fatigue, fear, and despair overlap and accumulate to produce a feeling of utter impotence” (p. 468). The feeling of too-much-ness “brings about a shrinking of our ability to take in and on the world that we are in, simply because it hurts too much

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to take it in and on” (Braidotti, 2020, p. 468). The uncertainty of miscarriage is rooted in too-much-ness, and mine was especially so as it occurred in the thick of the pandemic. Hundreds of worries, unanswered questions, and a general unknowingness combined with the immense workload of Academia to quickly become overwhelming and seemingly insurmountable; the too-muchness developed into a constant near-suffocation that threatened to crush me. It is through this idea of too-much-ness that we can begin to understand the plight of a miscarrying mother in an academic setting. “Too-much-ness” may seem like made-up, elementary-level lexicon. However, (1) all words are made up, and (2) the simplicity of the term is what makes an exceedingly complex feeling digestible. How else can we describe the sensation of varying levels of anxiety, anger, grief, stress, worry, physical pain, not understanding; the need for social comfort; and the need to be alone, all combining into one massive firehose from which the miscarrying mother attempts to drink while simultaneously teaching courses and writing for publication? Just reading that sentence alone probably felt like too much—what term could possibly encapsulate that experience? Too-much…ness. Therefore, it is my hope that through this analysis, not only will I experience some closure with my own miscarriage experience, but it can serve as a window into the mysterious, hushed life of a miscarrying mother and the too-much-ness that dominates her world. 4

Interviewing the Self

What I aim to do with this chapter is not only contribute to the de-­stigmatizing of miscarriage by promoting its open discussion, but cathartically claw my way through my own experience as an instructor and doctoral student who experienced a miscarriage with her first pregnancy. As a doctoral student specializing in qualitative research methodology, I am interested in interviewing as a practice. So, for this chapter, I used an interviewing approach I had not yet tried—I conducted an interview as both the interviewer and the participant; in essence, I interviewed myself. Even though my participant is myself, I still went through the same process in creating interview questions. I still phrased my questions in an open-ended way (i.e., no “yes or no” questions), aiming to elicit long, detailed responses (deMarrais, 2004), and I still used a semi-­structured interview style that utilized follow-up questions (Roulston, 2010). One major benefit to this method is my familiarity with my participant (myself)—I could easily create interview questions that centered on topics with which I was comfortable. An additional benefit is that member checking (Roulston, 2010) was automatic and logistically very easy; as the participant,

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if I did not want something recorded or published, I simply hit the delete button. This simultaneous member checking could also be viewed as a drawback since it is so easy to delete or revise a response. However, I would argue that when it comes to qualitative interviews, my own research processes involve frequent member checking anyway; my interview participants always have the option to weigh in on transcripts and delete anything with which they are not comfortable. With transcription, there are many decisions to be made (Hammersley, 2010), not least of which is how to phonetically transcribe the responses. I have a strong language background as an Italian instructor, so my interview transcripts are typically very detailed and include halts, incomplete phrases, and laughter. This time, though, because I (as the participant) was typing my responses, I (as the researcher) chose to present the responses as complete, cleaned-up speech that is easily readable.2 5

Self-Interview Transcript

What follows next is a transcript of my self-interview. The dialogue of the “Researcher-I,” i.e., the interviewer, will be displayed in bold font and will be right-aligned. The dialogue of the “Participant-I,” i.e., the interviewee, will be displayed in italicized font and will be left-aligned. Transcript I’d like you to think about what it was like going back to work and classes after the miscarriage. Can you describe that experience for me in as much detail as possible? The weird thing about it is that there was no period between me finding out about the miscarriage and going back to work. I didn’t take any days off, I didn’t cancel any meetings that were coming up. Even though it was December and the semester was almost over, I still had a few late oral exams to do with some students who needed an extension. I think those were the hardest, because they’re already panicking about having to do an oral exam one-on-one with their instructor, and because it’s through Zoom due to COVID, you, as the instructor, have to be 10 times more animated and “on” than you normally are for it to come across. You’re trying to ease their nervousness by giving them encouraging cues and smiles and nods, that kind of thing. This is pretty draining for me anyway, because I’m a naturally

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introverted person. I can turn on the energy and liveliness when I need to, but it just drains everything out of me. So, to try and be this positive, encouraging person when I’m weighted down by devastation, and to do all of that when my students and I are already exhausted by the pandemic…that was pretty difficult. I didn’t let myself completely fall apart and really grieve until I had submitted final grades, because I knew that I’d still have to keep it together for a little bit. I couldn’t let the dam break quite yet because I had to be the steadfast, reliable presence for my students in a very uncertain time period. You mentioned that you felt weighted down by the devastation and yet you had to hold back from yielding to the grieving process because of teaching obligations. When you did submit those final grades and were finally able to allow yourself to really participate in the grieving process, did that weight feel like it was lifted? Was it freeing in a way? You know, you would think that it would be, that it would be freeing to take the happy mask off and just break down, but if anything, it felt like the weight crushed me even more. I think work and school acted as a distraction to the grief, and though it was incredibly draining, I still hadn’t felt the full weight of what had happened. The dam was still intact. As soon as that last official day passed, though… that dam broke, and it felt like I was drowning. Drowning in tears, in grief, in lost hope, in this weird feeling of missing someone so terribly, in the pure uncertainty of what to do next, what would happen next. It reminded me of being at the beach and accidentally getting caught in a series of waves. They just keep pounding you and knocking you off balance and you can’t breathe, it’s too much of everything, it’s sensory overload, and you don’t know when it will stop. Even now, even after I know that I can have a healthy baby, because my rainbow daughter is in the next room with my husband, the memory of that post-dam-breaking aftermath is crushing. It’s hard to breathe even now. I would almost compare that level of grief to when I lost my grandfather, but I really do think that was different. With that, you had people pouring in from all sides, offering you comfort and food and a kind word or a hug. Miscarriage is a very lonely grieving process, because until you decide to tell someone, the only people that know about it are you and the doctor. So, when I got the news, I couldn’t just automatically lean on people. I had to tell them first. And because this miscarriage happened early on in the pregnancy, telling people I had a miscarriage also involved telling them I was—was—pregnant. Not only that, but this was my first-ever pregnancy. With my mom, for example, it was telling her not that she would be a grandmother for the first time, but that she would have been a grandmother for the first time. That’s not how I had always imagined that conversation.

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No, I imagine not. Okay, so you said that you thought work and school acted as a distraction for a while. Did the pandemic also act as a distraction? Because based on the dates you gave, that was right at the height of everything, so did it help take your mind off it at all? Not really. Honestly, I think it probably made it harder for me to not think about it. The vaccine hadn’t been approved yet, so there were a lot of people suffering and dying in hospitals at that point. I was experiencing my own loss, and then I couldn’t get away from the news and chatter about the loss all around me. Again, you’re choosing who to tell, and this was December, so there was a lot of family communication happening because of the holidays. There was a lot of coordination about if it was okay to get together, how to get together, that kind of thing, so the discussion of sickness and loss was constant, and most of the people talking about it had no knowledge of my very fresh and very painful grief, so it’s not like they were treading lightly. I did end up seeing my immediate family at Christmas, and my mom and dad knew, but I hadn’t told anyone else. I eventually ended up telling the rest of the family that I saw during that time because I couldn’t keep it together. You know how sometimes trying not to cry can make it worse? That’s what happened. I was trying so hard to rebuild that dam and put the happy mask back on, but I was failing miserably, and everyone could tell something was wrong. Earlier you mentioned that because it was December, you were able to disconnect from work and school pretty quickly. What was it like going back in January? Yeah, that part was hard. Because a miscarriage is not something you just get over in the span of a few weeks, at least not for me, and I don’t just mean ­emotionally—I mean I was still bleeding the first week of January, because passing a miscarriage at home takes a while. So going back to work and school the second week of January, that emotional and physical wound was still incredibly open and raw. I’m normally a pretty bubbly, cheerful person, but not that week. Not that month, really. This would have been Spring semester of 2021, so were you back to teaching and learning in-person? I was supposed to be, but because I’m a Type I Diabetic, I was in the high-risk category, so I was approved to continue teaching and attending doctoral classes

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remotely until I received both doses of the vaccine. Teaching and learning through Zoom is so incredibly draining. Meetings with faculty and students had started up again, doctoral classes had started up again, so I was back to regularly corresponding and interacting with people, and putting that brave, happy face on was completely exhausting. It’s exhausting even when something else isn’t going on, but to try and amp up your enthusiasm and facial expressions while it’s so difficult just to smile in the first place… I had nothing left at the end of the day. Not mentally, not emotionally, not physically. I think there might be a leave policy in place for miscarriages that maybe could’ve helped with that, but even applying for that kind of leave seems insurmountable and frankly, not worth it. To apply, you first have to tell multiple people, and those are people you may not know or have a good relationship with. Then, even if you do start that process, you have to go through the steps to get the leave approved, so you’re still having to function in this professional space while you wait and while your suffering is the freshest and most difficult. What else would you like people to know about experiencing a miscarriage while working in Academia? I think the main thing is that Academia is just not set up to support women going through something like this. It is extremely lonely, extremely draining, and unless you reach some kind of agreement with your supervisor or chair or doctoral advisor/professors, you are still expected to function at your normal, ridiculously high level since that’s the only type of acceptable functioning in this field. This is complicated by the fact that many people in positions of power are men, so not only can they not personally relate, but I know for me, at least, it made me even less likely to attempt the process of getting some leave time. Even if you do reach some sort of agreement with the appropriate people, that still involves talking about it. Because it’s not just whether you’re okay with them knowing, it’s that you actually have to talk about the fact that it happened. Even now, over a year later and after experiencing a successful pregnancy that resulted in an amazing baby girl, this is not easy to talk about. Not remotely. So imagine how difficult it is to discuss when it only happened a few weeks ago. Part of the problem is that miscarriage is so stigmatized anyway, so not only is it painful to talk about and re-live, but even if you are ready to talk about it, it’s not like it’s a welcome topic. You should see the reactions I get when I bring it up now—most people freeze, do not know what to say, and the subject will quickly get changed. The only people that don’t freeze are the ones who have also experienced this, but their reactions tend to also be sad as they remember their own past. I do try to be fairly open about my own experience

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to try and fight some of the stigma and make it more acceptable to talk about (if someone does want to talk about it), but the current reality is that this is still a very hush-hush topic and isolating experience. Especially in Academia, and especially during a pandemic. 6

The Too-Much-Ness of Miscarriage

As I conducted the interview with myself, the “Participant-I” brought up the comparison of being at the beach and being pummeled by waves. Over and over, the force of the water slams into you, only yielding long enough to make you think it is finally over before it knocks the breath out of you once again. It is too much water, too much force, too much sound, and too much salt. The fight to breathe, to break the unyielding cycle and stand back up seems ­insurmountable—this is what it is like to have a miscarriage during a pandemic in Academia. It is too much grief, too much isolation; there are too many emails and too many responsibilities. It requires too much strength, too much pretending, and too much bandwidth. The fight to make it to the next break, the next weekend, to gain some semblance of recovery and normalcy in a pandemic environment that is exhaustingly becoming the “new normal”—that fight seems unending. It is too much. I struggled to take “in and on” (Braidotti, 2020) my world because my world was too much to take in and on. The fatigue, fear, and despair (p. 468) of a miscarriage pummeled me, over and over again, threatening to break through my façade of high-level functioning and expose the mess underneath, a mess riddled with questions. Some of those questions (“Can I have a healthy baby?”) were answered within a year or so, while others, many others, remained unanswered. Even now, over a year later, I still do not know what to do if it happens again. Who do I tell? How do I tell them? Why is the half-sentence about miscarriage in the faculty handbook right in the middle of the section about pregnancy and maternity leave? Why do I have to read about baby bonding time while I am trying to figure out the procedure for being able to grieve the baby I lost? I was never advised on what to do in such a situation during any faculty orientation or training, and all the procedures for requesting time off in the faculty handbook are written in such a way that it is assumed the child was not only born, but born alive and healthy. As a miscarrying mother, I am already struggling with the feeling of too-much-ness; why must I also be left with so many questions? The world of Academia, with all of its many resources, is in a position where it could aid the miscarrying mother and propel her forward, but if anything, Academia only serves to drag the mother backward, back down into the waves

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that continue to pummel her. Though many miscarrying women want support, few actually seek it out (Séjourné et al., 2016); add in the bureaucracy of A ­ cademia, and the process of seeking support becomes that much more daunting and confusing. There have been enough Academic women who have experienced pregnancy over the years to prompt the creation of a maternity leave policy at most major universities; why is there so little support given for the most common pregnancy complication, one that affects one out of every four pregnant women (Séjourné et al., 2010)? Not talking about it does not make it go away, and not offering support does not mean it is not needed. It is time for Academia to notice the “silent battle” (Hiefner, 2020) miscarrying mothers are going through and create a safe, navigable space through which the miscarrying mother can begin to escape the too-much-ness surrounding her. 7

Conclusion

That too-much-ness did surround me, and the uncertainty around what to do, who to tell, and what would happen next, only served to exacerbate the feeling of it all being too much. On top of it all, the pandemic atmosphere added an additional layer of isolation to an experience that was already so incredibly isolating. Suffering a miscarriage is a horrible experience in the first place, but suffering a miscarriage while working in Academia and while functioning in a pandemic—the too-much-ness was just that: too much. In full transparency: this was a difficult piece for me to write. I did write this chapter in order—I started with the narrative, then the introduction, etc., so when I wrote that I hoped it would be a cathartic experience for me to go through this self-interview, it really was a hope, as I had no idea how it would turn out. As it happens, it was cathartic. Difficult, yes, but cathartic. I took breaks from writing, I shed tears, and I hugged my rainbow baby3 a little tighter some nights, but ultimately, I am further along in the healing process. I can only speak for myself and my own experiences, and I do not expect that the details I shared also apply to other miscarrying mothers in Academia. Every mother’s experience is different. I do hope, though, that this very public discussion of my own miscarriage can not only make it less of a stigmatized topic, but also send a message to those reading who have also suffered a ­miscarriage—you are not alone. Whether it has been 20 years or 2 months, that grief of waves slamming into you again and again can feel like it is just too much, but maybe—together—we can stand back up again.

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Notes 1 Because I conceptualize Academia as a physical space, it will be capitalized throughout this chapter. 2 I (researcher) checked with my participant to make sure this was okay; she was fine with it. 3 A colloquial term for a child conceived and born after a miscarriage.

References Braidotti, R. (2020). “We” are in this together, but we are not one and the same. Bioethical Inquiry, 17, 465–469. deMarrais, K. (2004). Qualitative interview studies: Learning through experience. In K. deMarrais & S. D. Lapan (Eds.), Foundations for research: Methods of inquiry in education and the social sciences (pp. 51–68). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hammersley, M. (2010). Reproducing or constructing? Some questions about transcription in social research. Qualitative Research, 10(5), 553–569. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1468794110375230 Hiefner, A. R. (2020). “A silent battle”: Using a feminist approach to support couples after miscarriage. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 32(1–2), 57–75. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/08952833.2020.1793563 Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Too-muchness. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 28, 2022, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/too-muchness Roulston, K. (2010). Reflective interviewing: A guide to theory and practice. Sage. Séjourné, N., Callahan, S., & Chabrol, H. (2010). Support following miscarriage: What women want. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 28(4), 403–411. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02646830903487375 Séjourné, N., Fagny, J., Got, F., Lacroix, P., Pauchet, C., & Combalbert, L. (2016). Internet forums following a miscarriage: a place for women in particular pain? Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 34(1), 28–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 02646838.2015.1079601

CHAPTER 8

Compelled to Care

Academic Work in a Mother-Fucking Dystopian Hellscape Mandie Bevels Dunn, Jennifer R. Wolgemuth and Lodi Lipien Abstract Drawing on theories of kinship, care, and affect, we use speculative fiction to invent a world where universities have, without irony or thought, begun evaluating people based on how much and for whom they care. In this dystopian world, universities make ‘care’ a pillar of success and, subject to state and accreditation oversight, evaluate the caring capacities and productivities of their staff, faculties, and administrations. When care is bounded and treated as a commodity within existing hierarchies, performance of care becomes about demonstrating institutional fealty. This mandatory care reifies existing power structures that capitalize on addressing short-term loss and trauma at the expense of redressing ongoing and permanent needs, such as those of people with chronic illness or parenting responsibilities. In line with dystopian critiques of education illuminating horrors of education policy and terrifying ‘utopian’ visions of education gone-wrong, this speculative fiction imagines how care can and will go wrong in neoliberal institutions unless (or even as) we relentlessly unthink understandings of care and unlink care from institutional policies and procedures.

Keywords care – kinship – academic motherhood – speculative fiction

1 Introduction We are sick to death of care. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased (even forced) our personal and institutional attention to the concept and work of ‘caring.’ In scholarship, too, ‘care’ figures prominently as both cause of and solution to the ongoing terrors of neoliberalism (Tronto, 2013) and traumas of living on a dying planet (Weintrobe, 2021). Overburdened by pandemic era care investments in our families, in unrelenting uncertainties, in politics, in

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climate disasters (and…), we have actively (appreciatively) divested from our pre-pandemic institutional care responsibilities—caring about the tenure process, our college’s stability, and what or whether our colleagues think of us. Not caring is a welcome relief as we participate half-heartedly in meetings that are meant to uphold and uplift—meetings about how we can better care for each other, revise work responsibilities to accommodate and account for care, and write our care responsibilities into annual narratives, enumerating the direct and assumed positive and negative impacts of care on our productivity. Underlying these meetings is an unstated and powerfully governing twopronged question: “What constitutes care responsibility, and to what extent can care responsibilities ‘count’ as hindrances to our work performance?” We are also wary, to put it mildly, of a university whose spotlighted attention on worker caring makes us squirm. We received instructions such as, “Show how the pandemic impacted your productivity by comparing how many journal articles you publish in a typical year to how many you published this year” and “Explain why your care responsibilities during the pandemic interrupted what would be your typical level of productivity” with significant skepticism and aversion. These requirements not only placed the burden of communicating what care may be required on individuals, but they also narrowly defined care, locating it only in relationship with workers’ abilities to produce. Could ‘care’ go the way of ‘research,’ ‘teaching,’ and ‘service’—verbs converted to nouns, ready-things for standardized scrutiny? Drawing on Haraway’s (2016) theorizing of caring in kinship (as opposed to families), Ahmed’s (2014) theorization of emotions including caring as socially and materially productive, and Berlant’s theory of cruel optimism (2011), we use speculative fiction to invent a world where universities have, without irony, put into action the Care Collective’s (2020) manifesto: “Universal care means that care—in all its various manifestations—is our priority not only in the domestic sphere but all spheres!” (p. 19, emphasis added). Caring about care in our world means universities make ‘care’ a pillar of success and, subject to state and accreditation oversight, evaluate the caring capacities and productivities of their staff, faculties, and administrations. The argument undergirding the creation of this world is that when promiscuous care is bounded and treated as a commodity within existing hierarchies, performance of care becomes showing institutional fealty. This care reifies existing power structures that capitalize on addressing short-term loss and trauma at the expense of addressing ongoing and permanent needs, such as those of people with chronic illness or parenting responsibilities. In line with dystopian critiques of education illuminating horrors of education policy and terrifying ‘utopian’ visions of education gone-wrong (Heybach & Sheffield,

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2013), this speculative fiction imagines how care can and will go wrong in neoliberal institutions unless (or even as) we relentlessly unthink understandings of care and unlink care from institutional policies and procedures. We build this argument by showing how focusing on care as a fix for the cruelties of neoliberal capitalism might go wrong—where care is normative and evaluated as evidence of worth. We invite you now to visit the hellish Holmes University, an institution that prides itself on centering care in everything it does and in holding itself accountable to its own capacity for caring.1 A disclaimer and a warning: this is a work of fiction and any similarities between characters and real persons, living or dead, are coincidental. Also, this chapter addresses upsetting events, such as suicide and sexual assault. 2 Sam I am the Judas Sheep.2 Last year in Vet School my professor took our “Animals as Meat” class to a slaughterhouse where we met Lucky, the mechanical Judas Sheep, whose job it was to lead an unsuspecting flock to its death. I’m pretty sure that’s me. Prospective students and their families gather around me at the entrance of the newly remodeled University Library as the campus tour is about to begin. It’s always like this. Those in front are keen, eager—they have already submitted their applications—while those in back haven’t bothered to end their phone calls or take out their ear buds. The back rowers, I like to call them, may never apply, but like the ones in front and the mass in the middle, they will follow. They always follow. “Welcome everyone to Holmes University where…” I pause because they will know it by now, having attended the Morning Welcome Meeting and FamilyStyle Lunch. “—everybody cares!” most of the group calls back in unison. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” I say. Every time. Because this is my script. “HOLMES UNIVERSITY WHERE…” “—EVERYBODY CARES!” they shout more enthusiastically. I’ve never understood why this works.

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“That’s better! Hi everyone! A big caaaaaring welcome to Holmes University! I’m Sam, your Campus Care Ambassador! I am so excited to show you around and answer your questions. Remember that care is at the center of everything we Emerald Elephants do. ‘Everybody cares3!’ I am here for you throughout the tour. I am here to make sure you and your families are supported to choose the university that is right for you, and I am confident that by the end of this tour you will see that the Emerald Elephant family is the best choice for your family!” The strange thing is that so many do come to that conclusion, including me and my family. We were back-rowers. Even though we qualified for in-state tuition, there was no way my working class parents could afford it—we figured I was bound for community college. Imagine how thrilled we were when I was offered the Care Ambassador position that covered tuition for all four years! When I started as Care Ambassador there were twenty of us, and now there are over sixty. The incoming class gets bigger every year, which means more tours, more love to spread. The “Turn to Care,” was a proud shift in Holmes’ University’s history—a stroke of executive genius in response to a conflagration of factors that made Holmes University anything but caring: massive cuts to childcare, counseling, health, recreation, victim’s assistance in response to the global economic recession that coincided with a spike in mental health incidents, a massive measles outbreak, and an alarming rate of sexual assault on campus. With great zeal, The Office of Assessment and Marketing took up a new slogan during The Turn to Care: “Care Matters!” Ten years later, we are nationally known as the university that best operationalizes care, and our care metrics are the top in the country. Just read the t-shirts in the ‘Campus Care Packages’ all families will receive at the end of my tour: Emerald Elephants are #1 in expressions of sympathy, #1 in peer kindness, #1 in positive emotional expression…. I would be a fool, of course, to drop out. “And over here is one of my favorite buildings,” I explain as we walk across the library’s landscaped courtyard. I point to the tall, sparkling all-glass building, sunlight dancing off its steel structure. “That building was built only last year by a generous donation from the Marist Bank Foundation and houses the heart of our campus, the…Oh!” I interrupt myself, “That’s one of our caring faculty members right now!” I give a hearty Holmes University wave and an Emerald Elephant air hug, an awkward combination of trunk-blowing and arm-embracing gestures, but she doesn’t see me as she cuts a wide path around our group. “We loooove our faculty!” I tell the group. I am not sure how much longer I can keep doing this. Being a Care Ambassador means my tuition is covered and guarantees a steady paycheck. But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough. I moved off-campus last year because I couldn’t

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afford to live on campus. I share a two-bedroom with three other roommates and twelve cockroaches. One of my roommates graduated last year and has been teaching as an adjunct in the Philosophy Department until she can find a full-time position (good luck with that). Last month she took on a ‘side gig’ as a sex worker.4 The landlord raised rent again this month so I had to get a second job too. I don’t think sex work is for me, at least not yet, so I’m working hourly for University Catering. Even with two jobs, I usually have to decide between food or books for class. Food usually wins out. I can always download books. At least I haven’t gotten sick. Care Ambassadors do not have health insurance. 3 Morgan I’m on my way back to my office to squeeze in a few hours of writing before the end of the work day, and I try to use the walking time to notice the flowers on campus, take a few breaths, and clear my head. As I pass through the central campus quad, I hear chanting. “Everybody cares! Everybody cares! Everybody cares!” I guess tours are back. Sure enough, clumps of families are being herded like sheep by a student with an official polo and a lanyard, all in the spirited emerald and pewter. The captive audience members are all carrying swag bags and I see a few people wearing those marketing buttons that say “Holmes University Cares,” the same one I discarded in a trash can the moment it appeared in my mail slot. I overhear the guide telling these hopefuls about everything the university will do for their families. To my horror, the guide notices me and gives me one of those elephant air hugs. Jesus. We look like idiots. I keep my head down and quicken my pace. As I bend the straight line I’m walking in to go around the tour, a squirrel scurries out of a trash can, hisses, and disappears up a shady oak.5 4

The College

The cold, sterile air conditioning hits me as I enter the double doors of The College. I see Him at the end of the hall and duck down a side hall, taking the long way to my office. A half-drunk mug of tea sits on my desk, brown rings staining its edges. I see three blobs of mold have formed. Could be worse.6 I open up the drafting document for my annual review and see the blinking cursor after the prompt “Please include a narrative detailing how you have contributed to the campus culture of care over the past year. See below for a list of approved supplemental evidentiary documents.”

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I start scrolling through the list of documents. My eye twitches. A few years back, a fourth pillar was added to the research, teaching and service trifecta on our annual evaluations: care. And, last year, the committee flagged my review for ‘failure to care,7’ triggering an automated email summoning me to the office of the Mother.8 I had to trudge all the way across campus to the Mother’s office, housed in the newly constructed Campus Care Center. The new space is a total 180 from the former dilapidated two-story building that used to sit on this plot, a former elementary school that had been repurposed into a student-wellness center. My own mother died in the measles outbreak two years ago, and I attended my three free counseling visits in the old building, mostly to snot-face cry on a cracked green leather couch, in the very spot where the Mother now nests. The Mother is an impossibly fit woman—rumor has it she does a cycling workout every day. That day, she was dressed in one of those androgynous, fitted jumpsuits, all in black, making her piercing blue eyes stand out more than usual. An award-winning chemist, she moved two years ago from her lab on campus to her administrative role as the Mother, head of the Care Council. In my meeting with her, the Mother fixated on comments from one evaluator, who wrote: “While Morgan succeeded in publishing in top-tier journals, had above-average teaching evaluations, and chaired the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategic planning committee, she didn’t show strong evidence of caring about Holmes University or any fellow elephants. Next year, Morgan should consider challenging herself to grow professionally by attending a specified weekend family-day event, stopping by any of the happy hour receptions at the Provost’s office, or attending professional development seminars sponsored by Christ Church9 at the Wellness center.” While the Mother enthusiastically shared her reassurances that this feedback and review ranking was something I could learn from, I imagined a world where I can actually attend these happy hours because they don’t happen after my child’s school is out for the day. My imagination of these events were disappointing, though, because all I saw in my vision was colleagues awkwardly asking me “How are you” or, even worse, trying to acknowledge what I’ve been through the past couple of years. “I can’t imagine, I don’t know how you do it!” they’d say. No fucking shit. I’d rather elephant air hug a Care Ambassador than attend one of those awful things. I endured the Mother’s encouraging lecture about ways I could better contribute to a caring campus community by imagining how much blood there might be if I poked her eyes out with the tusk of the stuffed elephant head nailed above her head. After the conclusion of the review, the Mother made small talk with me, asking how my four-year old was doing and sharing her delight in the latest announcement that He will be chairing a new strategic planning committee for

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supporting women faculty and staff at Holmes University. “I hope this makes it clear to you what a kind and generous man he is,”10 the Mother chirped. I guess the Mother also thought my filed report from a few years ago was made up. I push memories of the Mother and my mother to a corner of my brain and try to focus again on the blinking cursor. Last year’s review means I’m on notice, so I really want to figure out this game now. The list of potential evidence says I can upload photos of my office space and narrate how I create a warm and welcoming environment for students and colleagues. I wish I had taken a photo of my office before my plants died. I consider entering what I know is an unlocked office next door to switch our plants, take a quick photo, and switch them back. Did I log enough mindfulness minutes in my Outlook calendar? I check and the percentage of uninterrupted time Outlook calculated in my calendar is only enough to earn me a ‘needs improvement’ rating and another ‘failure to care’ meeting with the Mother. I type that I attended a wellness professional development about responding to student protest and refusal. I search my files for the confirmation certificate and attach it. I return to the smallest section, the one on potential evidence for showing care for children, knowing surely I must have done something on the list. Most of the indicators focus on community-engaged work at local schools, but there is a section for contributing to an inclusive working environment for families in The College. I can include evidence of supporting someone in my department with emergency childcare, volunteering on the weekend at family day for the athletic team, allowing students to bring their children to class, or submitting a syllabus policy detailing how anyone with childcare trouble can join your class virtually or complete the course asynchronously.11 I see that it only counts as caring when you expend care on someone else, not when you are the person who needs it. And, I guess those 12 weeks taking care of my child while simultaneously working full time doesn’t go anywhere on the rubric.12 I release a quiet “motherfucker.” While these other assholes are collecting feathers in their care cap, I’m busting my ass to keep my writing going, keep my classes afloat, attend all those required meetings, and make sure my kid stays alive. I close my computer, wrap up my charger, and put both in my bag to go teach my class. The day feeling impossibly long.

…

And yet I’m still not doing enough. The Mother expects me to attend the College’s ridiculous annual gala. Black tie required. I had to buy an emerald dress

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and will squeeze my postpartum body into some godforsaken Spanx corset and stumble around in pewter stilettos.13 And who’s going to watch my child? After a full day of shifting gears between research and teaching, all I want to do is cuddle up with him and read Goodnight Moon. Even though faculty get “credit” for taking care of each other’s children, all my colleagues will be at the gala, so I’ll have to pay the teenager down the street to tuck him in. It’s ridiculous. The College doesn’t give me extra compensation for this after-hours crap. Nope. They don’t care about me. If they did, this gala would be a casual, family-friendly event that doesn’t end at midnight. The “highlight” of the gala will be when the administration gives an award to the “Most Valuable Carer.” I mean, what the actual fuck? My mind flashes back to my narrow escape with Him in the hallway earlier. If He gets it, I’ll be furious. Everyone thinks he’s a saint because he coordinates those happy hour receptions. And now he’s on that stupid strategic planning committee. The idea that he could support female faculty and staff is so ironic that even thinking about it makes me nauseous. 5 Gala It was a chaotic scene at home before the gala. My child had thrown up at school earlier in the day, and I had to end my class early so I could rush over to the daycare and pick him up. He’s feeling a little better now, but I was torn. Do I attend this gala to appease the Mother or stay home and take care of my sick kid? Do you see the irony here? I want to take CARE of my kid, but I’ll lose care points if I don’t show up. Fuck. In the end, I decided to go because I can’t be seen as not caring about the university or I’ll lose my job. I arrived a few minutes late and had to walk in front of the speaker to find an empty seat. I could feel Mother’s eyes boring into the back of my head. The dinner plate in front of me was cold, and I only had one minute to eat before the big announcement. “and now, I have the honor of presenting this year’s Most Valuable Carer award to!” The applause drowned out the announcement of the name but it’s Him. You’ve got to be kidding me. He walks up to the stage waving at his adoring fans. “Wow! This is unexpected, but it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that no one cares more about this university’s employees and students than me.” The audience chuckles a little at his ‘joke,’ and I wonder how many of them know the truth.

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Figure 8.1 Holmes Herald newspaper article

“Seriously, though, I’m honored to be the recipient of this year’s award. I want to thank all of you, but especially my wife. I wouldn’t be here tonight if she weren’t staying at home to take care of everything. She makes it possible for me to give so much of myself to all of you.”

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Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that the Care Ambassador who I narrowly avoided this morning is coming my way to serve coffee. Oh God. I feel sick to my stomach. I need to leave before I vomit. 6 Epilogue14 Academic Care Info To: [email protected] Holmes University deeply mourns the loss of Dr. Olivia Bartholomew who passed away on Tuesday, May 14, 2032. Dr. Bartholomew joined the Chemistry faculty in 2020 and was the only and youngest woman to achieve tenure and promotion to Full professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. She was a major energetic force in the university’s ‘Turn to Care’ initiative and most recently best known for her commitment to ensuring a caring faculty in her role as the Mother, Head of the Care Council….15 Notes 1 “Spoiler alert” Žižek (2021) said in an interview regarding the United States role in (caring for?) Afghanistan: “I want to conclude with a reversal of the proverb which says to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is what racists do, when they realize that Western interventions—intended to spread freedom and human rights to poor ‘third world’ countries—fail miserably: they prefer to remove the dirty water of third world inhabitants, not mature enough for secular democracy, and to keep only the child, pure and immaculate. Perhaps we should do the exact opposite: throw away the pure white child and be careful not to lose the dirty water of the poor and exploited of the third world. The latter truly deserve human rights, and not just our charity and compassion.” What we are trying to say here is that centering care may not work because care is complex. Because it is enacted in fluid socio-political contexts and is thereby not a stable concept, caring cannot be assumed to be universally good—let alone able to produce universally good outcomes. If Sarte (1955) is correct, that “hell is other people,” care may sometimes be the mechanism by and through which (well intended) people make living hell. 2 See Pedersen (2013) for a provocative analysis and critique of a class visit and the Judas sheep. 3 Ahmed (2014) notes the collectivizing power of love (which we perhaps synonymize with care), “love [and care] becomes a way of bonding with others in relation to an ideal, which takes shape as an effect of such bonding” (p. 124). Holmes University cleverly co-opts care to “stick people together,” to unite them as Emerald Elephants in the same ways militaries and nations enjoin people through concepts of ‘brotherly love’ or the professed love of human difference in multicultural advocacy communities (p. 125). 4 We wish this situation was entirely hypothetical, but it is not entirely fictional. See, for example, Gee (2017).

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5 Jenni: When I was in grad school I fell asleep under a large tree. I woke to tree pieces flung at my face by a loudly scolding squirrel, presumably angry at me for…a reason I could only guess. Was I blocking its exit? Was I lying on top of its favorite acorn stash? Did it want my granola bar? Haraway (2016) reminds me that squirrels are kin, companion species in our collective living (well) together. A hissing, scolding squirrel is a reminder of my/our respons-ability to multispecies flourishing and a clear indication that my ability to respond well is wanting. I am woefully ignorant of the squirrel’s needs and motivations. So ignorant, I don’t even think to think about my ignorance. Instead I am angry at being disturbed from sleep, and fling an acorn back at the little menace. Just as kin (as in family) is not always kind, neither are kinship networks. But our recognition that we are networked and are collectively, if differently, responsible for creating the conditions for living (and dying) well, seems vital to any understanding and attempt at care/ing. A hissing squirrel is a signal and reminder of our failures to care. 6 Mandie: I left three half-drunk mugs of steeped tea in my office in March 2020. They each grew far more than 3 blobs of mold. Jenni: Yup. After 6 months of quarantine, I returned to an office overrun with fruit flies. Which is how I learned that no one had been emptying our office trash cans. 7 “Love [care] is crucial to how individuals become aligned with collectives through their identification with an ideal, an alignment that relies on the existence of others who have failed that ideal.” (Ahmed, 2014, p. 124, emphasis added) 8 The Mother. Haraway (2016) speaks of ‘making kin’ in recognition that all “earthlings are kin in the deepest sense,” moving understandings of kin away from the genealogical and ancestral (p. 103). Afterall, kin in the ‘blood relation’ sense is often ironic—kin is not often kindred, kind is not always kind. This makes Holmes University’s adoption of ‘The Mother’ label doubly troubling and sinister. It is meant to signal what everyone knows it is not—kin concerned with “well-being for diverse human beings and other critters as means and not just ends” (p. 103). 9 While Christianity markets itself as a religion, much of Christian culture in the United States is tied to political motives and goals, including sustaining patriarchy. Christians have come to idolize John Wayne, a cowboy figure who epitomizes toxic masculinity, and of course Donald Trump, too (Du Mez, 2020). Sex, purity, and women’s bodies become political pawns for men to display their strength and valor in public, and exert their control and violence in the shadows (see, for example, the latest scandal of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Church [Chotiner, 2022]). 10 Being interviewed by Al Jazeera about the known sexual predators Andy Orchard and Peter Thompson, professors at Oxford University, Mia Layanage said: “We know that feeling when there’s a man in the room who, you know, is dangerous in some way” (Davies, 2021). Also see Erickson (2021), Flaherty (2018a, 2018b), Gaffney (2021), Halliday (2021), Martin (2021)... Note: This list is truncated due to word limitations. Sourcing these citations was a depressing task. We could have produced a 4000-word chapter consisting solely of references to articles about sexual harassment and assault by male faculty. 11 The Care Collective (2020) advocates “re-socializing and insourcing (rather than outsourcing) our care commons and infrastructures” (p. 77). In a cruelly optimistic (Berlant, 2011) future, Holmes University fully embraces this idea within its enduring neoliberal accountability framework. That is, Holmes University faculty members are incentivized to voluntarily and collectively provide care for one another’s family members (children, elderly) when doing so provides evidence of their quality and productivity. 12 Mandie: On October 25, 2021, I tweeted: “Yet another two weeks without childcare and I’m barely hanging on. It isn’t okay. I have mostly stopped mentioning it because no one cares. My life has become invisible to the academy. It isn’t okay.” This tweet struck a chord, eliciting a stream of comments from other academics having similar experiences. According to Twitter analytics, the thread was viewed over 80,000 times. Jenni: We just received an email from our Dean, dated November 29, 2021, that all is well with respect to COVID-19. Staff and faculty are required to return to campus this coming

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Spring semester. I wonder what happens to staff and faculty with children under 5, children who cannot yet be vaccinated? What do those staff and faculty do when childcare centers (importantly, necessarily) close to prevent the spread of the virus? I anticipate more than a handful of resignations. 13 Jenni: There is something so disturbing to me about wearing school colors as a voluntary sign of fealty to the university. 14 See Gaskill (2019). Mandie: There’s a billboard in Tampa that advertises a bank that cares, and every time I drive by it, I become so annoyed. And now I think about this book chapter, too! 15 The suicide of the Mother marks the end of our account. We imagine the Mother suffered, maybe even greatly, under the weight of her responsibilities—repeated performances and required governances of care. Perhaps, like our protagonist, the Mother too had personal care experiences outside Holmes University that caused her great pain. Ahmed (2014) reminds us however that “while the experience of pain may be solitary, it is never private. A truly private pain would be one ended by suicide with a note. But even then one seeks a witness…” (p. 29). Acknowledging the communal nature of pain seems prerequisite to any notions of collective care, compulsory or otherwise. Through Butler, Ahmed (2014) notes the privilege of emotional intelligibility—our pain matters when it is recognized and when recognized, it is legitimated. Private , unspeakable pain, neglected pain counts less, if it counts at all. Certainly it is not pain that can be cared (for/with/about). The question of care is always one of mattering—what and whose pain matters? And what can we do about it?

References Ahmed, S. (2014). The cultural politics of emotion (2nd ed.). Routledge. Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press. Chotiner, I. (2022, May 26). Decades of sexual-abuse coverups in the Southern Baptist Convention. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/ decades-of-sexual-abuse-coverups-in-the-southern-baptist-convention Davies, D. (2021, October 19). Oxford professors abused position with sexist and Drunken conduct. Aljazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/19/oxford-professorsabused-position-with-sexist-and-drunken-conduct Du Mez, K. (2020). Jesus and John Wayne: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation. Liveright Publishing Corporation. Erickson, A. (2021, April 9). ‘I just want women to be safe’: Women who resigned from UMD math department speak out about sexism. Duluth News Tribune. https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/education/6973750-I-just-wantwomen-to-be-safe-Women-who-resigned-from-UMD-math-department-speakout-about-sexism Flaherty, C. (2018, August 10). More than rumors. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/10/michael-kimmels-formerstudent-putting-name-and-details-those-harassment-rumors#:~:text=

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But%20on%20Thursday%20one%20of,anyone%20but%20cisgender%20 heterosexual%20men Flaherty, C. (2018, April 9). University pledges action after report paints damning picture of sexual harassment in piano program. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/04/09/university-pledges-actionafter-report-paints-damning-picture-sexual-harassment Gaffney, R. (2021, March 22). Former FSU professor faces allegations of sexual misconduct, allowed to retire amid investigation. WFSU. https://news.wfsu.org/ wfsu-local-news/2021-03-22/former-fsu-professor-faces-allegations-of-sexualmisconduct-allowed-to-retire-amid-investigation# Gaskill, Z. (2019, November). Carbon Monoxide poisoning: Mixed-acid cocktail ­suicide attempt. Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Section Newsletter. https://www.acep.org/uhm/newsroom/nov2019/carbon-monoxide-poisoningmixed-acid-cocktail-suicide-attempt Gee, A. (2017, September 28). Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/28/ adjunct-professors-homeless-sex-work-academia-poverty Halliday, J. (2021, August 1). Durham University keeps college head in post despite alleged intimidating conduct. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ education/2021/aug/01/durham-university-keeps-trevelyan-college-headadekunle-adeyeyein-alleged-intimidating-conduct Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. Heybach, J. A., & Sheffield, E. C. (Eds.). (2013). Dystopia and education: Insights into theory, praxis, and policy in an age of utopia-gone-wrong. Information Age Publishing. Martin, A. (2021, January 13). UCF moves to fire professor accused of racist tweets for ‘misconduct’ in the classroom. Orlando Sentinel. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/os-ne-ucf-negy-investigation20210113-2qx75gqgcbhj3bw6sk6imjchre-story.html Pedersen, H. (2013). Follow the judas sheep: Materializing post-qualitative methodology in zooethnographic space. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 717–731. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2013.788760. Sartre, J. P. (1955). No exit, and three other plays. Vintage Books. The Care Collective. (2020). The care manifesto: The politics of interdependence. Verso. Tronto, J. C. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. NYU Press. Weintrobe, S. (2021). Psychological roots of the climate crisis: Neoliberal exceptionalism and the culture of uncare. Bloomsbury. Žižek, S. (2021, September 8). Why the Taliban fear the West – Slavjov Žižek. Breaking Latest News. https://www.breakinglatest.news/news/why-the-taliban-fearthe-west-slavoj-zizek/

PART 3 Mothering as Relational

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CHAPTER 9

Gifts and Grief

Poetic Ruminations on Academic Mothering during the COVID-19 Pandemic (and Beyond) Kelly W. Guyotte Abstract Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a point of disruption that forced me to interrogate the practices of both mothering and being an academic, this chapter turns to poetry as a form of artful inquiry into my experiences with/as both. As a partner, a mother of two children, and a tenured associate professor, the pandemic brought to light the challenges of work/life when there was no clear distinction between ‘work’ and ‘life.’ Writing this collection of poems cultivated a vulnerable space for me to work through the grief I experienced as I stumbled through the collisions of mothering/academia; it also provided the opportunity to pause and appreciate the unexpected gifts that burst forth. The photos within were taken during the pandemic as I documented my/my family’s experiences.

Keywords mothering – pandemic – poetry – academic – academia – mother

1 Shelter-in-Place I will never forget the first day the day after we learned the phrase ‘shelter-in-place’ when hours, minutes, seconds slowed into intermittent drips of a barely leaking faucet.

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I put colored chalk in our cool carport for the girls to draw imaginary creatures and lands far away not yet knowing how much I would crave my own escape from the humdrum in the months to come. None of us understood that everything would change that the curve would never flatten the way they hoped that the vaccine would never reach the numbers they wanted that temporary orders would be reinstated again and again. I think back with sadness of my one-and-a-half-year old who would soon only know of a life with masks and six feet away and pick-up shopping Of my seven-year-old who would attend school virtually for more than a year longing for what she once knew, a life of innocence and freedom and hugs Of myself who would celebrate tenure, a fortieth birthday, an award through socially distanced parties and drop-off gift baskets When I look back to that first day and my painful realizations of a new slowing temporality worries of isolation fears of future health it’s easy to mourn

Gifts and Grief

Figure 9.1 March 14, 2020 (Day 1)

feeling the grief of what-was for our children our-selves. I’m glad on that day we didn’t know of what-was-to-come instead innocently pressing chalk into smooth concrete as time dripped on. 2 Grace Sometimes I give myself the grace of turning off the alarm my body-mind craving to disconnect

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from the 24/7 ongoingness of parenting-pandemic-academic-life. Waves crash over me as I lay in my bed sensing every shift of ebb, flow unable to move gasping for breath and begging for respite (en)gendering an exhaustion so heavy pressing/prodding/persisting all day and deep into the night when eyes sting with fatigue yet body-mind itself forgets how to turn off. Eventually, sleep finds me when the tide retreats bestowing a few hours for thoughts and breath to become hollow a pause in which I nestle like a comma in a sentence a brief inhale filling my chest before the waves lap against me again and I awaken to the calls for “mama.” 3

Too Much I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. We utter it, always feeling a pang of guilt

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that academic moms feel when we admit what we know about ourselves in a fit of frustration or maybe resentment because it’s just too much. Our angry breath incites a sharp stinging air which suffuses the open patriarchal wounds we wear like feminist badges serving as an embodied reminder that there’s no such thing as academic dads.1 4

75 Days Behind the posts I still feel the hollowness the tensions of a forced stillness that was never still a screaming quiet that was never quiet the unending collisions of home/work/home/work ad nausea in days that never seemed to end through the incessant hoisting of a boulder up a hill only to have it fall again a jarring reminder that a new tomorrow is another today. 75 days of photographs I took them with regimented regularity documenting one-family’s-pandemic-life

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with concise vignettes and little emoticons of happy faces/hearts/sunshines thinly veiling our isolation masterfully masking the swells of my constant worry. But behind those posts those curated images and stories I know I know because I see-I lived the story of an academic/mom a mom/academic who slept too little read too much persistently shrouded in a blanket of worry of todays and tomorrows and little bodies who needed everything when I had so little to give.

Figure 9.2  April 17, 2020 (Day 35)

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Lost and found How curious it was that when the world stopped we stepped timidly outdoors to quietly reacquaint ourselves with flying insects cotton candy clouds and the warm sun freckling our welcoming skin hearing for the first time what happens when sounds of traffic both air and ground are displaced and filled with lilting feathered refrains jovial neighborly greetings and the vocalized flutters of youthful delight.

6 Peculiar Isn’t it peculiar that those creatures to whom we lovingly tend seeming only to take from us keeping us from our ‘work’ are also the very beings that fill us, giving so much life.

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Imposter Syndrome What does the tree think when it looks around and notices the strong and supple branches the vibrantly colored leaves of its neighbor? What happens when it looks up at others towering high above its modest canopy those unknowingly fleecing sunlight and soil and air and space? Does it feel shame envy

anger melancholy?

Or does it peacefully sway in the soft breeze relaxing comfortably into itself gently waving hello to the passing wren. 8 Willful2 Have you ever stood against the current in an eddy that demands you move this way, or that yet you allow yourself to resist its bossy push and, instead, you avow your course

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Figure 9.3 September 9, 2020

against the flow moving wrongly through your own right. 9 Awe I never know the right response when a well-meaning someone dribbles with a head tilt and a sharp tone of compassion I just don’t know how you do it. The words strike me in a way that saps the air from my lungs and I hold a brusque smile awaiting renewed breath so I can fumble for the polite way to say I don’t fucking know either.

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10 Tensions To feel incessant push and pull, simultaneously embodied born(e) within and beyond tensile threads ensnaring me every way I turn when expectations collide through bodies connected entwined as mother-child as academic-mother as me-everythingexpectedneededdesired I pause, breathless, and ask helplessly who have I become when the tensions never cease and I, entangled, cannot understand or speak myself outside them.

Figure 9.4  November 1, 2020

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11 Space What would it be like to take up space? To dig our feet deep into rich soil and allow ourselves to be watered/sunned/fertilized absorbing it all as though we deserve each and every drop. To feel our heads reaching upward as if pulled gently by a marionette’s string lifting our chins so high we exude a radiant, exquisite confidence of I belong here. To release our suppressed voices in a thundering boom that shakes the shoulders of those around us letting eyes rest on ours while gaping mouths pause and ears listen. To hold rapt an un-interrupting audience that not only listens but feels our struggles/successes/stories letting our words impact and affect so deeply that the only ethical response is change. To not feel guilty or ashamed of taking leave after 9 months of nausea/worry then labor/healing and pumping quietly off-camera in our offices during Zoom meetings and squeals/shouts of children on-camera while working from home and missed deadlines when a virus takes down our entire family and asserting ‘no’ when we just can’t do another thing and

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overheard mutterings of ‘how unprofessional – leaving work early to pick up her child from school’ and rolling eyes when we accidentally pull a lovingly stashed toy from our work bags and gruff dismals of us as scholars and all the other ands that fill our days. To inhabit these ands as interstices, not-boundaries, in-betweens like swollen streams overflowing the banks of mothering and scholar-ing nebulously and freely. To breathe in the ands forcefully thrusting our chests outward against your assertion that we cannot possibly be both here and there, that we must choose one. To take up space in the academy as a mother and academic means first asserting with resolve that we belong both here and there and then you moving aside so we can have a seat at the table. 12 Futuring If I were permitted one gift to leave all mothering-academics

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Figure 9.5 April 18, 2021

it would be that your colleagues students family friends others acknowledge appreciate applaud the powerful and (em)powering force —the gift— you are both in your home and in academe and that you would believe it too.

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Notes 1 A phrase used in honor of Jessy (a pseudonym), who explored this idea in an interview about academic mothers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. 2 A nod to Sara Ahmed (2014).

Reference Ahmed, S. (2014). Willful subjects. Duke University Press.

CHAPTER 10

Queer Mothering in Academia as Pandemic Preparation A Dialogue between QueerMotherScholarFriends

Jill Hermann-Wilmarth and Caitlin L. Ryan Abstract In this chapter, the authors explore how their decades-long friendship and academic collaboration has informed their experience of being queer mothers in the academy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using dialogue as a format, they consider how queerness and the intertwining of their lives helped them rethink family, community, work, and friendship in ways that provided a support system to help them survive difficult times. By highlighting queerness in these aspects of their lives, they provide possibilities for carving out queer(ed) space in their futures and in the futures of queer/parenting/ academic communities more broadly, offering a vision of a queered, more complicated, and nuanced academy where people’s unwillingness to be any one part of themselves at the expense of another might help other queer and marginalized folx thrive.

Keywords queer – queerness – mothers – academic friendship – collaboration

1 Introduction The two of us (Jill and Caitlin) are both white, queer (lesbian), cisgender women. We are both academics—elementary teacher educators, specifically— who have been research and writing collaborators for over a decade and a half. We are also both mothers. And we have both been all of those things and done all of those things through these last several years as, collectively, our planet has weathered the global pandemic of COVID-19. During this time, Jill and her partner were parenting a teenage son and a pre-teen daughter, which meant navigating online schooling and enforcing significant restrictions on their children’s social lives. Caitlin and her wife were newly-licensed foster parents

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who had accepted long-term placement of a 13-month old a few months before the pandemic, which meant navigating new parenting and the toddler years of their (now-adopted) child during quarantine. As we’ve reflected on these recent times and the ways we’ve grappled with both our individual and shared twists, turns, and coping strategies within them, we noticed that, with a few notable exceptions, queer academic parenting and living through a global pandemic have an awful lot in common. In other words, we’ve always been focused on keeping our queer selves, our queer families, and, through our work, our queer communities, healthy and safe in an often-unsafe world. We realized the work we’d done over the years—not all of it smooth and seamless—to become collaborative (queer)motherscholars (Matias, 2011) prepared us to face a pandemic. Surrounded by a sense of community helped us survive. Now we can see how the long-distance network of support we built within our working relationship: the community-building, attending to the common good, and the relative comfort with vulnerability and constant unknown-ness of the future required from queer mothers doing queer work in academia. These resources haven’t made COVID easy, but they have helped. Having realized that what we’ve needed in this present moment are the very things we have been building together over the course of our (often shared) careers. Now, we wonder if there are ways we’ve constructed our lives as (queer)motherscholars that can serve as a way forward into the (hopefully changed) “post pandemic” world of academia, both as ongoing reminders for us and as a guide for others. What follows in this chapter, then, is a dialogic exploration of these overlaps of queerness, academia, and mothering during our experience(s) of COVID. We wrote this as a joint reflection because we have written each other’s academic careers almost as much as we’ve written our own. Since one of our most significant tools for survival, personally and professionally, has been our deep and ongoing connection with one another, we aim to give readers insight into that connection by modeling our process, showing how we overlap the personal and professional that makes our relationship so meaningful. When we write motherscholarfriend,1 we want to signify how no part is without the other, all constantly in dialogue, much as our voices are here. Through this dialogue, we trace the realities of our queer academic mothering lives that led to the systems we built for our own safety and sanity, including our personal/professional partnership with each other. We explore how those carried us through varying, but often ultimately similar life and work and family experiences, and both into (and hopefully through) COVID. We end with a look to the future, and how these queer musings on family, work, and community might point

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a way forward, writing the not-yet future into being and calling into reality a more humanizing set of relations for ourselves and others.

…

CLR: Do you think people believe us when we tell them we met by stalking each other at conferences? It sounds weird. JHW: That’s what happened! You were at my sessions about my dissertation, and I came to sessions where you were planning your dissertation work. We started talking. And here we are. The world of queer literacy research, especially focused on the elementary grades, is pretty small and even smaller two decades ago. So it was a bit of an inevitability. CLR: Especially because when we started working together, it wasn’t like either of us could look around our university and find a group of queer elementary education scholars doing queer research. When we did find someone, it felt like we had to make a way to make it work. JHW: I think we were open to it because we were each raised up in queer communities that taught us the importance of creating connections in order to survive. And elementary education, then and now—with its suffocating assumptions of heteronormativity and all that implies about our understandings of children, families, and teacher i­ dentities— is not always friendly or welcoming to queer people or thinking, so it mattered that we nurtured our connection. And having queerness in common gave us a key starting point. CLR: Yes, and helped us find ways to extend that connection beyond our own collaboration. Even though we most often collaborate with each other, the knowledge of how grounding it is to be in queer professional space has encouraged us to find ways to join and expand any academic queer space we find ourselves in. JHW: The physical spaces aren’t necessary, though. Sure, physical proximity is nice, but a privilege. And, it’s a privilege that not a lot of queer scholars, particularly ones like us at regional universities with high teaching loads, get very often. It’s been so long since we’ve actually seen each other in person…almost three years. Yet, maybe ironically,

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we’ve continued to collaborate in many of the same ways that we did pre-pandemic. CLR: Exactly. We learned the importance of shared documents and video calls long before 2020! JHW: We’ve mapped out a familiar rhythm that’s served us well. Before Zoom became the norm for every work communication during the pandemic, we’d been using Skype and GoogleMeet and phone to discuss what happened at our research sites as well as my struggles with parenting and your worries about the sustainability of a long distance relationship. CLR: Just like we can finish each other’s sentences in a manuscript, we often know if the other needs advice or a listening ear or a co-rage. JHW: Yes! We’ve toasted marriages, births, contract signings, and publications. And we’ve offered virtual and literal tissues over disappointments, rejections, illnesses, and the deaths of family and loved ones. CLR: We are, in other words, in the other’s life and in the other’s work. JHW: It is as much a professional relationship as a personal one. CLR: The boundaries overlap, which is quite queer. JHW: Without those queered boundaries, I don’t think we would be able to write in vulnerable spaces together, recover from the frustrations natural to any collaboration, remind each other we need to reinvest in clear communication about work, or, frankly, research something so intimate to our very lives. CLR: We were used to queered boundaries, queered distance, and each other’s queer lives. No other part of the shift to pandemic work felt as seamless as our collaboration. Because we built it that way. JHW: Looking back, our careers and connection with each other have always been intertwined with mothering, too. A lot of our research is about building the schools we wished we’d had, and that we wish for children, including our own.

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CLR: It’s true. The mothering thread is also odd since you, Jill, were the only one who was a parent when we met. And a fairly new parent, at that. Doing the HARD, in the weeds, breast-feeding-and-nap-schedules thing. And you were a professional academic, too. Doing it all, at the same time, the way it always seems to go. All while I was a grad student who was (simply) writing about queer parenting. Academic understanding definitely doesn’t equal lived, day-in-day-out experience, and yet somehow we connected. JHW: But I remember that you listened. It was almost because you had more limited family responsibilities than I did that you had space. And because you were involved with a community of queer families through other friendships and your research projects, you had language to help me name my own family and its experiences. CLR: Didn’t I teach you the words COLAGEr and queerspawn [i.e., from Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere, now just names referring to kids of queer parents], even though you were actually a queer mom raising COLAGErs and queerspawn? JHW: You did! That’s what I mean. You had the language I needed. CLR: But at the same time, you were also teaching me. I learned so much about being a queer academic and mother from you. You taught me the realities of academia and the job market for queer women and the challenges of building queer community outside of places that already felt like home. You were out as a teacher before I was, so I hung on every story you told about how you navigated homophobia in the classroom too. JHW: Like my teacher education student with the Bible on his desk? CLR: Exactly. JHW: He would pull it out and thump it down and stare at me and my pregnant belly like it was a shield between him and the reality of my queer family. Little did he know I was a religious studies major in college. CLR: Ha! He was fighting a culture war, but you were just living your life and had scriptural receipts to boot! But I learned from you that such things might happen. You helped me be prepared to face those situations.

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JHW: I remember telling you how I handled borderline-inappropriate job interview questions as a queer mom, too, and how I had to pause in some of those early interviews to pump. So much pumping. CLR: Part of why our connection was so powerful to me at that point, I think, was that you were a concrete example of the kinds of families I wanted to support with my teaching and research. I included your stories in my teaching all the time. When my pre-service teacher students would suggest they were afraid to read LGBTQ-inclusive books in their elementary classrooms because parents might get mad, your family was the perfect counter example. “So, my friend Jill is gay and a parent,” I would say. “Her kids have two moms. And let me tell you, if you DON’T include books with LGBTQ people in your classroom, you’d definitely hear about it from her. So which parents are we really talking about?” JHW: Because they really, really don’t want to hear from me. CLR: Right? I stand behind that. And, to be totally honest, you were also always a model to me, a person who had the kind of partnership and family I hoped I might have one day. JHW: Even when you weren’t partnered or parenting, we both were working at regional institutions outside the places we’d been raised, working on collaborative projects to directly serve teachers. We were investing to keep ourselves and our families – present and future – safe in the schools staffed by the people we were helping to train. I think our connection as queer scholars allowed us to mother each other, supporting our journeys and goals through our personal connections and our shared academic projects, finding support in and through our queer, (future) mother, and academic identities. CLR: Our identities all collapse into how we define friendship. JHW: In those early years, I was living the mothering you weren’t yet able to do, but you were living the scholarship I wasn’t able to do. One reason for that was because I had a son and, eventually, a newborn daughter, but also because, right before she was born, I had been diagnosed with cancer. CLR: That was hard.

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JHW: That was obviously a huge deal for me and my family, but I also think it was a defining moment for us and our work. We had to build some serious resiliency. In our partnership, I’m often the one who pushes us to do new projects or meet deadlines, and I couldn’t do that when I was sick. You had to push us on during those years. CLR: I was scared for you. And us, I guess. It was a stark reminder that nothing is guaranteed. Our work wasn’t more important than your health, obviously, but I also knew you wanted us to keep going. So we stumbled through. I lit candles for you at a vigil for cancer patients while you were in chemo treatments. I called to check on you. But otherwise I just tried to keep our projects moving forward. It didn’t feel like much. JHW: But it helped. Especially knowing our research was still progressing. I remember one day when I was still in treatment, I was rocking my baby and you called me from the road as you left the elementary school where we’d been collecting data documenting LGBTQ-inclusive teaching. I remember your excitement as you told me a vignette from the day that you’ve now repeated in conference presentations, talks, and our book (Ryan & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2018) about kids creating a gendercreative holiday at their school. Every time you’ve retold that story, I think about the part I lived that others don’t hear. Nobody else knows I learned about this scene after you asked after my daughter and empathized about how hard it was for me to parent and recover from a round of chemo. That my “I’m so sorry that I’m not out there in a school!” protests were met with “you are here analyzing with me now!” My value as a researcher was supported by your friendship. This made it possible to take reams of data, collected across time and geographical space, and compile them into a text. I was parenting and recovering and you were researching and we were writing. Together. And now you are parenting and I am researching and we are writing. Together. No part of our story happens without the other. CLR: And here we are. JHW: It’s funny how past parallels present. Because I see you doing the same, in-the-weeds parenting now that I’ve done. CLR: Which is one reason you’re good at making silly faces on Zoom that make my toddler giggle: you’ve been there. And I’ve snuggled each

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of your kids in their preschool and early elementary years as we took breaks during in-person writing sessions. JHW: We know, from our own lives, that kids with queer parents and queer kids are…just kids, and we know intimately how they are parented or have the opportunity to learn in school matters. We want to figure out how to help teachers make it a part of their lives. CLR: But that balance of work and life is increasingly difficult. We should also be real about the ways that we recently leaned into the friendship and parenting sides of our connection and away from more traditional productivity. The mothering and surviving we are doing has to come first. JHW: Pandemic parenting is its own challenge, but the ways we came to ­parenting—in different ways and at such different times—also make our situations different. We are both queer moms and academics, yes. But I birthed one of my children, after finishing up a piece of my dissertation no less, and my partner delivered the other as I was a patient in the same hospital recovering from cancer surgery. So even though my kids have no biological connection to each other, they both resemble their parents. And let’s just say it: we’re all white. CLR: Don’t people tell your kids that they look alike anyway? JHW: They do! We don’t need that kind of connection to be a family, but it seems others need it for us. CLR: People say that stuff about resemblance with adoption too. Even when it’s generally clear, because my wife and I are white and our kid is Black, that we are not biologically related. It’s so interesting. And bizarre. So yes, I came to parenting through the wrought foster care system and entered into motherhood knowing that the love and stories of various parental figures in my child’s life would need to be included in our family. JHW: I remember that first pandemic summer, our weekly video calls were planning research instead of analyzing or writing it up, and, as always, chatting about jobs, families, and the general pandemic. And, since it was the summer of 2020, the murder of Black men in Minneapolis and Georgia and and and.

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CLR: It was so much. We knew, because we live in the United States, that racialized violence was nothing new, and, in fact, was the basis of our own privilege as white women, but these events and our conversations about them hit differently this time. JHW: And not necessarily only because the world noticed and came out to march for Black lives en masse, even in the middle of a deadly pandemic, but because it was so clear this reality had come home in a new way for you. I mean, you’d always wanted Black (and Brown and all) children to have access to the basic humanity of safety as they moved through the world, but now I was watching you witness and live that very intimate familial Conversation about the ways that Black children, boys, men did not have that access. CLR: We talk about race in direct and explicit ways all the time in our family, but I knew, as the new parent of a Black child, that these were conversations WE would have with our own child. JHW: This beloved child. CLR: Whom we want to raise with deep racial consciousness and connection to Black communities and people, for whom we can provide financial and educational opportunities, and with whom I’d found my identity as mother. But I know he will never, no matter the connections we facilitate or the aunties and uncles he has who look more like him than my wife and I, have the kind of safety that a white child has. As so many transracial adoptees have explained, his proximity to whiteness may be both a curse and a kind of privilege, but it is not protection. There is nothing I can do to protect him from vulnerability to the kind of violence that, while it dominates the news now, has been happening for centuries. JHW: It is terrifying. And, while I had experiences with my own beloved children at that age and older who had been in dangerous situations, and even though I’d also worked to create safety in schools for Black and Brown children, there was no advice I could offer. I could listen, I could believe, I could theorize, I could draw on my academic knowledge, but I couldn’t know. And while your baby is a little older than mine had been during those newborn days when I rocked her at home, post chemo, and you listened to my worries and fears, it just feels so parallel. These

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conversations are familiar, the paths already tread: illness, fear, worry, vulnerability, isolation, un-shared biology, deep love. Writing and reading about versus experiencing while making space. CLR: And now our sharing of our lives as moms, as queer people, as academics, as all of it at once together and disparately, is overlaid with the pandemic. JHW: COVID has brought our lives and our kids’ lives even closer to our academic work. My teenager stumbles through the screen in my utilityroom-adjacent home office, mumbling a hello as he takes his laundry to the machine during lunch break from online school. My daughter shares what she has loved about the books that our queer book group is reading during a research meeting. And your kiddo always wanting to say hi in all your meetings. CLR: Before daycare opened back up, those meetings were arranged around his naptime, and now often begin with you talking to him on the phone as I drive him to school. JHW: Truly, the best way to start a research meeting. CLR: And we still worry about COVID exposure, what it will mean if we are sick but also need to teach and parent, since work and parenting don’t stop for germs. But we’d never have created the Zoom-based research project we’re doing now without the pandemic (though, I know we are loath to call anything COVID-related a silver lining). We are tired, like most humans who have survived these pandemic years, and know that all-COVID-all-parenting-all-work-all-the-time is untenable. JHW: Hasn’t academia—particularly for women, more particularly for women who also parent young and school-aged children, and even more particularly for queer women whose coparent also deals with homophobia and sexism and a gender-informed paycheck at work— felt untenable for a while? You and I knew pre-COVID that our scholarly relationship only worked because we shared more of our lives with each other than just scholarly aspects. CLR: When mentoring new queer scholars, we often tell them to only work in collaborations with people who they want to hang out with outside

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of research meetings because the academy is dehumanizing enough for queer folks already. Why commit to intense working relationships with people who increase that struggle? JHW: Yes! During COVID, our friendship has felt more important than the work by a mile. Parenting a toddler is hard enough, but to do it with no childcare, no libraries to hang around in reading books, while worrying about if you’ll contract a possibly-fatal disease? Much harder. Having someone who knows my older children well, and understands the ins and outs of their successes and challenges, and how those have been magnified by the specifics of a lockdown pandemic has truly been a gift. And I’ve learned from your family. I now explain to my students, why intersectional identities matter to your queer, interracial, adoptive family. Those feel like successes in ‘These Times.’ CLR: I think this is where we have to talk about the messy parts. JHW: Fair. There are complications in our respective families, things that are unsettled and have to play out as time goes on. It’s like we keep having overlapping experiences even when the details are really different. CLR: Right. A lot of our early story revolved around your son’s early years and then your daughter’s early years. A lot of our present involves my toddler. But, there’s a specific silence I haven’t filled yet. This chapter has been hard to finish because each time I go to work on it, I’m not exactly sure how many kids I have. Which to most people’s ears probably sounds like absolute nonsense. JHW: But not to queer folks, honestly. We know family is fluid. We know things change. We know that words and labels don’t capture all that we are to each other and all the caring that people do in their lives. CLR: True. I need to trust that community wisdom. Because I don’t have a word for my teenage kiddo, honestly. She came to live with us about 10 months ago when she was 17. We thought she only needed a place to stay for a night, but that grew to a few days and then we all just fell in love with each other. She completed our family in a way I didn’t know we needed. It was a LOT to raise a “three-nager” and a teenager and somehow keep a job, especially during a pandemic. But I felt so lucky to know her and it all felt like it just worked somehow.

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JHW: But teenagers are hard, even as they’re wonderful. Nothing prepared me for the challenges of parenting a headstrong and very independent teenager, and that’s with raising him since birth. CLR: I love that you get that. It’s made talking about this with you much easier. Because yes, my kiddo has had many, many, many hard times. And she’s resilient and brilliant and strong. And hurt. And hurting. And lots of other things that are her story to share. But, at this point she doesn’t live with us. I don’t know if or when she will again. And I don’t know how that relationship will continue to evolve. And while that might be very queer, it’s also painful. Like we said earlier, it’s one thing to have the language for something; it’s another thing to live it. But we’re living it, somehow. One day at a time. I just know that even after these words are published, we’ll still be figuring it out. JHW: But that’s it. While we’re alive, our lives don’t stop, not for cancer or a pandemic or anything. Not while we’re breastfeeding or fostering or grieving. So we will still be in dialogue, still reimagining, still writing both the same and new chapters. CLR: And, hopefully, encouraging our colleagues to reimagine with us their and our and future colleagues’ academic lives. JHW: So that the academic and the personal are allowed for more parts of more people. CLR: Not just the people for whom it has always been.

…

It’s hard to look ahead when time keeps happening. It’s hard to draw conclusions when we both continue to negotiate illness and parenting and travel and deadlines, personal and professional obligations, families and friendships. In fact, most of that has come up for us just in the last few days! This is real and unending for us, as it likely is in some form for those of you reading this. But it is because of this reality that we remain as committed as ever to nurturing our (queer)motherscholarfriendship and our queer parenting/academic communities more broadly. Because we want to be clear that this work never is and never has been limited to just the two of us. Communities of support beyond our collaboration that we built through queer networks at conferences over

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the last decade have proven invaluable during the pandemic, particularly the very challenging first year. As the scholarly expectations from our universities have remained, we have had collaborators with whom to design research who understand our ideas, our situations, our challenges, and our needs. We’ve built equitable research, writing, and editorial teams with folks who are aligned with us theoretically and methodologically, as well as have strengths where we have deficits. This has meant that we aren’t afraid to ask each other for time or support when a parenting issue arises, when homophobia and other forms of oppression at work arise and takes our emotional time and energy, or when the pandemic is just weighing us down. It has also meant that our long-shared commitment to using our positions as researchers and professors to create paths to change and support the work of classroom teachers could continue even when we couldn’t physically be in elementary and middle schools. And that, as Caitlin’s family likes to say, is not nothing. And that’s good, because our world right now needs a lot of queer somethings. As we conclude this chapter, politicians are claiming an end to the pandemic, even as numbers rise across the globe and a variety of other viruses such as MPV are spreading throughout (queer) communities, both locally and globally. Schools are in person even while mask mandates are dropped. Politicians ended the child tax credit, the U.S. Supreme Court has brought an end to long-accepted reproductive health care, and talking about having two moms or two dads in schools is illegal in parts of the U.S., as is following medical advice when parenting a trans child. Our queer families remain at risk. The kinds of research and teaching we do is increasingly challenging, risky, and exhausting. We don’t have any idea when this pandemic will truly end (or, frankly, if the next one may have already begun), or what that world will look like. Precedent is no longer precedent. But, regardless of how academia is structured in a post-pandemic world, regardless of how gender/women/sexuality/parenting/ mothering are considered the domain of debate rather than the domain of civil and human rights, we know we will all need each other to help imagine queer otherways, especially during these traumatic times. Recently, we listened to an episode of Glennon Doyle’s (2022) podcast, We Can Do Hard Things in which Doyle and her son Chase interviewed the queer Vietnamese American poet Ocean Vuong. There is lots of mothering and queering and intersectional wisdom in this conversation, but mostly, we found hope-through-queer-connection to guide us as we move forward. Calling on Thomas Merton, Vuong reminds us that “where you are and who you are is only where you start…. The label is not a finite container. It is a field of knowledge. It’s a project” (Doyle, 2022, minute 7:21). Vuong also spoke of “hypervigilance as a praxis” (28:08), where we recognize and value the constant analyzing,

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calculating, and strategizing required by many queer, trans, and other marginalized folks to simply exist safely in a world not made for us. This helps us reimagine the academy as a queered place—a project to queer—where the experiences and knowledge of mothers and caretakers and women and queers and femmes and others who sit on the borders (Anzaldúa, 1987) are centered, valued, and shared. We imagine a queered, more complicated, and nuanced academic future where our presence and our voices and our unwillingness to be any one part of ourselves at the expense of another are a part of that complication. Where, by claiming space for (queer) motherscholarfriends to succeed, we open new spaces for those who have yet to step in and complicate our thinking. We know that the ways we engaged as academics and mothers doing queer work pre-COVID have helped us during these times, and will, hopefully, continue to sustain us. It is our hope that other mothers, queer people, and folx who feel like they are drowning in both expectations and lack of support, will find our experience helpful and hopeful. How, we wonder, will we, will you, will all of us, continue that work and start a new journey, a new story, a new way forward from here, with each other, boundaries blurred, and into wider possibilities? Note 1 In this paper, we continually ran up against the limits of language. We are “parents,” and appreciate the inclusivity of that term, but choose to claim “mother” as an identity here. We claim “mother” as an identity because “parent” doesn’t reflect the role gender plays in how we create family, how we experience sexism at work, nor how we are and are not valued into the public sphere as women. For another example, is “friends” too informal to reflect more than a decade of regular, close, personal and professional connections? “Friend” doesn’t fully encapsulate the ways that we are in the other’s life, but other words might imply a relationship that ours isn’t. Squashing words together has become a linear type of Venn diagram of how our lives overlap.

References Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/la fronteras: The new mestiza. Aunt Lute. Doyle, G., Wambach, A., & Doyle, A. (Hosts). (2022, April 5). We can do hard things: Mothers and sons with Ocean Vuong (and Chase Melton) [Audio podcast] https://shows.cadence13.com/podcast/wcdht/episodes/7d81e014-1711-4862-b0d9e7cffc875049

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Matias, C. (2011). “Cheryl Matias, PhD and mother of twins”: Counter storytelling to critically analyze how I navigated the academic application, negotiation, and relocation process [Paper] The American Educational Research Association (AERA), New Orleans, LA. Ryan, C. L., & Hermann-Wilmarth, J. M. (2018). Reading the rainbow: LGBTQ-inclusive literacy instruction in the elementary classroom. Teachers College Press/GLSEN.

CHAPTER 11

Mothering and Working across Difference Intergenerational Conversations on Living with Uncertainty Daniela Gachago and Mo Gachago Abstract This chapter unpacks the uncertainty and complexity that the pandemic threw us in, both in our personal but also professional lives. As a family we know what it means to live in contexts that are contradictory and confusing. In a conversation between my son and myself we reflect on what it means to grow up as cross- and third-culture kids. Drawing from the design thinking, emergent strategy and supercomplexity literature, we are trying to make sense of our own narratives and experiences and explore how we can transfer these into our learning and teaching practices.

Keywords cross-culture kids – their-culture kids – supercomplexity – uncertainty – emergent strategies

1 Mothering and Working across Difference: Intergenerational Conversations on Living with Uncertainty I (Daniela) am an academic staff developer at a large research-intensive university in South Africa supporting academics in designing for blended and online learning. We live in a world that feels increasingly radicalised, with less and less opportunity to find common ground. Years of student protests that have shut down campuses and caused polarisation among colleagues and a pandemic that has radically transformed the way we think about teaching and learning, have forced us to explore what a resilient or agile learning design would look like—one that could better respond to the increasingly complex but also uncertain contexts we find ourselves in. Scholars such as Ronald ­Barnett have written for many years about the complexity and uncertainty of our times and have challenged us to re-imagine alternative universities, alternative ways of

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doing and being academia: “Higher education is faced with not just preparing students for a complex world but is faced with preparing them for a supercomplex world. …It is a world in which we are conceptually challenged, and continually so” (Barnett, 2000, p. 257). Barnett gives a name to these confusing and often contradicting views of the world we were and are exposed to, with the presence of multiple conceptual frameworks through which individuals and groups interpret their world. And these multiple conceptual frameworks not only exist but are competing and conflicting. COVID-19 has made this uncertainty and complexity real for all of us. How do we live in times where the only constant is that there is ongoing change and precarity? In times that need us to be adaptive, resilient, able to stay open and vulnerable even when our worldviews are challenged in their foundation? There is a growing number of approaches to learning design that engage with complexity and uncertainty. The design thinking literature, for example, has found its way into learning design, focusing on what they call ‘wicked problems’ (Buchanan, 1992), i.e. problems that are so complex that there are simply no straightforward solutions. These problems can be explored, but never really solved. Another really useful way of thinking about how to navigate highly complex and uncertain contexts comes from the emergent strategies literature. adrienne maree brown (2017), the co-founder of the emergent strategies institute, defines emergence as “the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity or relatively simple interactions” (p. 3). Emergence shares similarities with the principles of design thinking, such as iterative and non-linear thinking, and the understanding of the importance of multiple perspectives through participative and co-creative design processes, but goes further in their view of change as systemic, as long term and deeply interconnected and relational. What I found particularly helpful when engaging with the literature around emergence, is how it views the relationships between the small and the large, the personal and the professional. adrienne maree brown talks about the principle of fractals, of how patterns appear in the smallest element and the largest element in an ecosystem, how the large is made up of smallest things, how patterns repeat at scale. This made me think how I could bring in some of what I learnt in my personal life into my professional life and vice versa. Living with complexity and uncertainty is not new to me. I grew up in Vienna, Austria. My mom was Austrian, my dad Italian, which meant that my sister and I grew up in a home with two cultures, two languages, and two sets of values, which were not always easy to navigate or even understand. My parents’ parenting styles differed widely: my dad favouring a more traditional way of raising children, mirroring his own upbringing in a small village in Italy in the 40s, based on firmly set values such as respect for elders; while my mother’s

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approach reflected the more liberal and malleable parental views of the 70s. I remember one particularly difficult moment, when my then-boyfriend visited us in my dad’s home village during one summer holiday, and he had to sleep in my grandfather’s house. At home, in Vienna, he regularly slept over, but in that little village there were clearly different rules. While I can understand this now given the distance of age and also as a mother myself, at that time I was enraged with my father and embarrassed for how he treated me and the situation in front of my boyfriend. There is extensive literature now around Cross Culture Kids—(CCK s) (­Pollock, van Reken, & Pollock, 2017). While growing up with different cultures allows a larger world view, better language acquisition, and an ability to act as a cultural bridge, it can also create a sense of rootlessness, restlessness, and lack of a sense of belonging. I can relate to these characteristics of CCK. While I always felt ‘a bit different’ from my friends, being a CCK also untethered me from home, allowed me to leave and explore the world more easily than my friends. It allowed an implicit understanding of difference and an orientation towards others from an early age that I draw from still today. If I thought my upbringing was difficult, my children’s identities are way more complex. They are of Kenyan, Austrian, and Italian ancestry; one born in Botswana, the other one in Scotland; and living in Cape Town while going to a German school. Pollock et al. (2017) would define them as Third Culture Kids (TCK s). They are intimately familiar with clashing cultures, observing the often liberal German parenting of their friends and their father’s traditional or conservative response within the highly complex space of South African society. And my own often not very clear positioning, as somewhere in between, trying to mediate those liberal German values and my husband’s African world. These tensions can be seen in the following story: A few months ago, I got a phone call from my 16-year old son, Mo, asking me whether his friend could sleep over. It was around 11:30 at night and they had been attending a party near our house. Now that it was time to think about getting home, this friend was stuck. Her mom could not pick her up, and she didn’t want to take an Uber on her own. I have known this girl since kindergarten; she and my son have been friends for a very long time. While even just a few years ago I would have said yes without much thought, now that they are both older, these decisions are not as easily taken anymore. Our understanding in general is that no girls would sleep over at our house. So, this would be a big exception. However, we do live in Cape Town where concerns around security are heightened, and I could understand why her mother did not feel comfortable with her daughter taking an Uber home on her own this late at night. I said yes, quickly, without consulting with my husband.

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When the kids got home and got ready to sleep, my husband called me to our bedroom and asked me what was happening. I had completely forgotten to tell him about the girl sleeping over. My husband is Kenyan and growing up in the 80ies in Nairobi, was both in many ways freer than in today’s Cape Town, in terms of mobility and independence, but also more conservative in terms of relationships between boys and girls and involvement of parents. For him, a 16-year-old girl sleeping over at our house was inconceivable. It took time, conversations with the girl’s mom, conversations with my son, and backchannel conversations with my husband, to resolve the situation and make the final decision: she could sleep over, but in a separate room. My son was deeply embarrassed and upset with how things had unfolded. This is my son’s account of the evening: It was embarrassing because I asked you and you said yes. And now it must be so embarrassing for [ friend’s name] because for her, it’s hard to get a way home, even though she came there knowing she didn’t have a way to get home, and she was expecting that one of her friends will help. And the problem is, she lets us sleep over at her house all the time […] I wouldn’t want to be in a house with a father who doesn’t want me to be there. That’s horrific. I would have gone home. But [ friend’s name] didn’t have the choice of going home. So, she had to sleep here, knowing that she was unwanted. So that’s my thing. And then the worst problem is I asked you and you said it’s okay. Because you understood…. Mo tells me that in principle he appreciates living with two cultures: … because I live in a household where there are two different cultures, I can navigate the world better. […] living in a multicultural household is something positive in my opinion. […] It allows me individually—[to] take the best of both worlds—making experiences, starting from different points of view. So, I don’t mind that…I don’t think it’s difficult at all. I think there’s a lot to gain from having to engage with two cultures. Because you get to be with different people, learn different aspects, eat different food and everything. And I enjoy that part of the story. But, history repeats itself, I feel, when Mo tells me that he is bothered by what he perceives as inconsistency in our parenting: That’s my biggest problem with my dad’s culture…it’s the fact that my dad likes to take control of random things in my life. And then he likes to act like

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he’s controlling all of it. Whereas he just at random, almost in my brain at random,—I’ve learned to like maneuver it—but at random he gets involved. So, for example, like with [girls name’s] house, he doesn’t care when I sleep in girls’ houses, I’ve done it multiple times. But then as soon as a girl comes here, suddenly there’s a problem… I remember the anger towards my own father so well, the lack of understanding as to why what was allowed in one context could not happen in a different one. How can I attempt to explain to my son why his father reacts the way he does? What’s missing here is my husband’s voice. I believe that the inconsistency my son refers to is my husband’s attempt at stepping back, at letting me run with my more liberal, democratic ways, which he does not always agree with. In our house I am seen as the more lenient one, the one who is more easily swayed, the one who can be convinced more easily about contentious issues. I see children as more equal to their parents than my husband, and I give them more space to voice their opinions and to be heard. We both have moved towards each other, but sometimes my husband finds my ways ‘too democratic’, on the verge of disrespect, and that’s when he steps in. I asked Mo how he navigates these different ways of dealing with the world, and he tells me how he learnt to strategise and be patient: When you at all points of your life struggle with getting some stuff done and everything that your friends can do, but you can’t. And you need to figure out ways to get around that and figure out ways to like avoid. […] So you just need to be patient, and you need to learn to tolerate it, even though as much as it hurts you, as much as it annoys you. At that point, you can’t do anything in life. So, then you just learn that, sometimes in life, you can’t have everything. And then with the patience thing, I don’t know. It’s also, I don’t know…it gets better over time. Our fights unsettle me; my husband and I don’t reach agreements easily. Often, our differences in viewing the world are so distinct, they shake the foundations of my beliefs, beliefs I never thought could be shaken. They unsettle me to a point that I stop trusting myself and my gut feelings. It also leaves me wordless sometimes. Never in my life would I have thought that some of the deep-seated beliefs I have could be challenged so radically by somebody so close to me. Sarah Sentiles (2017) evoking Judith Butler writes that: the ethical surfaces not when we think we know the most about each other, but when we have the courage to recognize the limits of what we

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know. Like Levinas, [Butler] proposes an ethical system based on difference, on relationships with others unlike you. We are bound by what differentiates us as unique and irreplaceable and by our responsibility to others we don’t understand. […] What’s required is staying in relationship even when we can find no common ground. Especially when we can find no common ground. (para 7) How do we stay in relationships with one another? It is somehow reassuring that my children seem less fazed by the difference in values and cultures than I, that they can navigate these cultures more seamlessly and are better at putting into words what exactly in a culture or in cultural values upsets them. They develop strategies to work around these stumbling blocks in what they see as the lives they want to live. They seem to be much stronger in understanding who they are, and also in expressing what hurts them. I overheard my son that night, explaining to his friends that ‘this is just what happens when you have an African father’. It made me stop. Made me think about what they define as ‘African’, the values they attach, but also their instinctive understanding that these values are very different from the ones they assign to their German friends’ parents; how they are able to translate what was happening to their friends. I am not sure they judge these values as better or worse (although the German values would make their lives easier). But I get a sense that my children understand where their father is coming from. I can sense in them a better grasp of and maybe words to talk about these different world views than I had when growing up. Much of what happened to me as a child or a teenager, I only understood much later in life. Mo explains how he learnt to differentiate between his father’s values and what he sees as his father’s conservative parenting style: I value that like he’s helping others and maybe his dependableness. …once you make a promise, you’ll keep it. The way Kenyans value community and friendship. That’s the stuff he’s learned in his life. And I learned from that, obviously, the values my father teaches me. But that has nothing to do with his upbringing style, that just has to do with how he is as a person. So I think it’s very difficult to connect the dots between who he is as a person and his conservative beliefs. You find that they don’t correlate with each other. Coming back to adrienne maree brown’s (2017) notion of how the small repeats at scale—what would these ‘relatively simple, experimental interactions’ (p. 3) look like in my family when we navigate our different world views? Design Unbound authors Pendleton-Julian and Seely Brown (2018) suggest that muddling through—which they describe as a system of successive incremental

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changes, successive small manoeuvres that one can do quickly, and then assess in order to move on—might be the best strategy to work on complex problems. I understand that idea of muddling through—the feeling of just winging it, day after day, moment after moment, fight after fight. Of instinctively understanding that life is not always straightforward. That in our supercomplex relationships, where belief systems clash and where we sometimes see no common ground, we need to accept the uncertainties and the inconsistencies of different people trying to muddle their way through increasingly complex situations. Sometimes I feel I never get better at it, and sometimes I feel I have learnt a little bit more about myself, my partner, or my children in this life. It takes time, many conversations, openness to listen and not to immediately respond, and the capacity to sit in the discomfort. brown (2017, 2021) asks us: how can I be/stay wide enough so that everyone in the room can breathe? How can we do this? How can we stay wide enough in all our differences in opinions, which sometimes feel irreconcilable, so that we can all still breathe? Could, should situations like the one with Mo’s friend, which made everyone deeply uncomfortable, be avoided? The experience got me thinking, brought memories to the fore that I had forgotten. It became the subject of this book chapter, making me unpack our different perceptions of the incident deeper with my son and my husband. Still, the girl in question got hurt, Mo was embarrassed, my husband upset, and I was deeply unsettled. We all felt fragile and became slightly strange in this encounter. Can we learn to become better at responding to these situations as they arise? Barnett (2012) calls for what he terms: “a creative knowing in situ” (p. 69), and adrienne maree brown (2021 talks about learning “through an accumulation of lessons” but changing “through an accumulation of practices” (p. 141). In my son’s responses, I can hear the development of practices or strategies to become better at navigating these different world views, which we do not understand, a supercomplexity that “produces a multiplication of incompatible differences of interpretation” (Barnett, 2012, p. 67). We need to acknowledge that these kinds of complexities are part of our lives, even more so since COVID-19, as mothers, wives, and academics. This, more personal form of uncertainty, the uncertainty that arises out of a personal sense that we never could hope satisfactorily even to describe the world, let alone act with assuredness in it. ‘Anxiety’, ‘fragility’, ‘chaos’: these are as much characterizations of an inner sense of a destabilised world. (Barnett, 2012, p. 69) This means that we also have to accept that in this deeply unknowable, destabilised world, there is knowledge that will always be “knowing-in-and-with-­ uncertainty” (p. 69). If we believe that knowing and uncertainty are intimately

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interconnected, teaching and learning becomes not an epistemological endeavour, but an ontological one, as Barnett argues—one where we must focus on who our learners are and how they can prosper in uncertain worlds. If the world is unknowable, by extension the “‘I’ is radically unknowable” (ibid), as well. So how can my attempts at mothering my children in this highly uncertain and complex world help me in my practice as a learning designer? I have been thinking a lot about integrity and authenticity recently, about how our personal and professional lives merge more and more, especially so after working from home during COVID. Who we are and where and who we live with, broke into our professional space. I cherish this, I recognise the value of integrating the personal in our professional identity. To make these difficult conversations part of our teaching and learning designs, but also to model the living with uncertainty and complexity, staying in relationship with the other, exposing us to the unknown, allowing ourselves to be fragile and strange. As Abegglen et al. (2020) argue, Although we have learners who come from different cultural backgrounds, most of our students have more complex lives than students had in the past. They are defined and shaped by a multitude of experiences that go far beyond binary explanations of the self to ones that span the globe and extend into the digital realm. (p. 21) Sharing my own personal stories of uncertainty and complexity with my students, opening myself up, making myself vulnerable, and acknowledging that I don’t know either, and that’s ok, might be what is needed in today’s world. I want to end this chapter with one last quote by adrienne maree brown (2021), encouraging us to sit with our discomfort: Our work is not to pour out the ocean, pull the tide, conjure the moon, rotate the earth—even though it often feels that massive; we merely have to be willing to sit there, breathing deeply, and seeing what is. Let it move in and through us into action. To let the awe, wonder, interconnectedness, and curiosity in, let it lead. (p. 161) References Abegglen, S., Burns, T., Maier, S., & Sinfield, S. (2020). Supercomplexity: Acknowledging students’ lives in the 21st century university. Burns, Maier, Sinfield, 4(1), 20–38. Barnett, R. (2000). Supercomplexity and the curriculum. Studies in Higher Education, 25(3), 255–265.

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Barnett, R. (2012). Learning for an unknown future. Higher Education Research and Development, 31(1), 65–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2012.642841 Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked problems in design thinking. Design Issues, 8(2), 5–21. https://web.mit.edu/jrankin/www/engin_as_lib_art/Design_thinking.pdf maree brown, a. (2017). Emergent strategies. AK Press. maree brown, a. (2021). Holding change. AK Press. Pendleton-Jullian, A., & Seely Brown, J. (2018). Design unbound: Designing for emergence in a white water world (Vol. 1). MIT Press. Pollock, D. C., Van Reken, R. E., & Pollock, M. V. (2017). Third culture kids: The experience of growing up among worlds. Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Sentiles, S. (2017). We’re going to need more than empathy: We have to get radical with the idea of the other. LitHub. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://lithub.com/ were-going-to-need-more-than-empathy/

CHAPTER 12

And These Things Are Good Shelly Melchior Abstract This work is situated between the world of trees so lovingly depicted by Richard Powers in his epic tome The Overstory (2018) and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s, Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds (2017). Weaving narrative, memory, and poetry, the author attempts to connect the human and non-human as she found them during the COVID-19 pandemic and the lessons she learned along the way, including how much we humans could learn from trees.

Keywords narrative inquiry – qualitative inquiry – storytelling – COVID-19

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This speculative wandering combines my personal journeys as student, mother, daughter, wife, and teacher before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. These labels are inexplicably intertwined, threaded, and knotted together even though they were/are not always. They are layered—and dependent upon the receiver. I am rarely all of these things at once to anyone other than myself—a constant mind-bending juggling act that is not seen but fully felt. I am also in the season of the empty nest. I did everything later. I earned my BA in my thirties. My MAT in my forties, and finally, my PhD in my fifties, during a global pandemic no less. When the world was shut down and shuttered, and many academic mothers were riding the collision of two worlds often kept separate—that of home and work—it was all I knew, and it was quiet, though my mind was not. And the unquiet mind is a lonely place in which to live.

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The streets are silent. How can streets be anything for they do not speak? The only shadows not of people but of buildings, cars, light poles, and stop signs. And trees. We cannot forget trees For they still have something to say…

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Using Richard Power’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Overstory (2018) and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds (2017), I use this space as a “finger-paint of words” (Powers, 2018, p. 221); a place of time travel within spaces and places of care—caring for others, for one another, for ourselves, for our world, and interrogating this notion of care as a “human trouble…but not a human-only matter” (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017, p. 2). 2

The Care/FUL Care/GIVER If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? It is the same sound that occurs when all that is so exhaustively done in private that which appears seamlessly done and expected suddenly is not and is finally noticed.

Caregiver—/ˈkerˌɡivər/—noun 1. A person who provides direct care (as for children, elderly people or the chronically ill), typically a family member or paid helper (MerriamWebster, 2022b). To care is to suffer—to be a caregiver is to suffer with others. It is more than a simple providing of care, especially when the person being cared for is familiar.

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It is storied, historied, seen as selfless even though it often feels anything but, a coming up against “the persistent idea that care refers, or should refer, to a somehow wholesome or unpolluted pleasant ethical realm” (Puig de la ­Bellacasa, 2017, p. 8). To care is nuanced. And this care/FUL suffering became a part of everyday reality when the pandemic moved from faraway lands to our home shores, to our home towns, to our backyards. While many were sheltered in place with family members, wiping down groceries, and wearing masks or protesting their right not to, and watching continuous updates attempting to weed truth from fiction, many of us turned within. In the anxious mind, this anxious mind, care and caregiving became both active and passive. Caring for others is often outward—out there—­listening, being there, bringing groceries, bringing food, feeding, watering, touching, “everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017, p. 3). There is also the constant care being done within. And maybe that is what anxiety truly is. A turning inward of the need to care, to make right, to plan, to know. An internal alarm clock that refuses to shut off, “And while the sense of emergency translates into constant anxiety, into the expectation of a catastrophic event, a less broadcasted background violence slowly destroys more fundamentally the tissue of everyday existence for living beings at all scales” (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017, p. 8). Thus, care is different for the self—and often it is most important to care for oneself when we are least able to. When we care for others it is typically seen and seen is often shared, yet when we care or attempt at self-care, we carry that which is unseen, though no less felt, possibly even heavier for its being carried alone. Care—\ ˈker—noun 1. Suffering of mind. 2. A disquieted state of mixed uncertainty, apprehension, and responsibility (Merriam-Webster, 2022a). To care is to worry. A heaviness like wet snow on a February morning trudging, unbalanced, dark came in said hello and took residence without a fucking invitation.

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Today my dad asked me if I had talked to my mom lately. Today my dad asked me if I had talked to my mom lately. Today my dad asked me if I had talked to my mom lately. I wish I could have told him that I had talked to my mom lately.

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My father was exactly 811.3 miles away at the start of the pandemic. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s soon after my mother passed away and he didn’t see it. He actually abjectly refused to accept any help, and with all that was going on in our world it was easier to believe, to convince myself, to refuse to accept that he needed help. Until he fell. While on the phone with me, he fell, and then he was fine until he fell again. And this time he could not get up. And I was 811.3 miles away. It started long before that, a slippage into “the long private place that each passing year will deepen…Dementia starts here” (Powers, 2018, p. 36). But slips are often slow, a hand out to catch oneself, a hand offered to assist, or a voice through a phone saying it will all be okay when you are not quite certain anything will ever be okay again. He had called me the day before in a panic. He had been caught by a traffic camera and he was so worried about how much the ticket would be. As he was recounting this story, I looked at my Life 360 (a tracking app), and he had not left his house in days. He didn’t need to because I was caring for him from afar. Groceries delivered, daily FaceTime check-ins, phone calls in the morning and at night. This caring for, from afar, “convokes trouble and worry for those who can be harmed by an assemblage but might be unable to voice their concern and need for care—for example, trees and flowers…, or whose voice is less heard—cyclists, older people” (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017, p. 52). And while I believed I was listening—it was without seeing. Or maybe it is the reality of life with blinders on for he was okay enough for me to do all I felt I could do to show concern without fully showing care. Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) writes of this difference between concern and care as related, The first denotes worry and thoughtfulness about an issue as, though not necessarily, the fact of belonging to the collective of those concerned, “affected” by it; the second adds a strong sense of attachment and commitment to something. (p. 42) Caring then, often implies action. It “contains a notion of doing that concern lacks” (p. 42). And I can argue that I was caring for him from afar, but they do

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not have to operate in tandem. Or even in isolation. Maybe I was caring for him from afar as much as someone who is living, finishing a dissertation, navigating a pandemic, and being an emotional support system as wife and mother, daughter and friend, and teacher/graduate teaching assistant/employee to/for sixty students whose faces I no longer saw in person but virtually—­anxiety and worry on faces separated by a screen. All, including myself, in need of mothering. Maybe I was concerned—but not concerned enough at that time to bring him to me before the fall. Or maybe, and this is the most honest answer—I didn’t want to be an only child without a parent. Today my dad asked me if I had talked to my mom lately. My mom passed away in 2018. Christmas day. Nearly one month after a life-altering diagnosis that would have killed her eventually but did not. Instead, she acquired a urinary tract infection that turned into sepsis that went undetected for far too long. At one point, my mom had to go to the bathroom, and we couldn’t find a nurse so my daughter and I lifted her and put the bed pan underneath and balanced as we tried to keep both her and the bedpan steady. I don’t know that either of us have ever smelled anything like what came out of her. When the nurse finally came in, we had the bedpan there and mentioned the smell and she said it was the chemo medications my mom was taking. I should have asked a doctor. I should have mentioned the smell. I should have stayed longer. I should not have left her side. And there is this, that she was surrounded by caregivers, and no one noticed a thing until it was too late. To acknowledge that my dad needed care—was to also acknowledge that he was no longer that safe place, my safe haven, my rock. And selfishly, still, I am not ready to give that up just yet for “What we care for, we will grow to resemble. And what we resemble will hold us when we are us no longer…” (Powers, 2018, p. 497). Powers (2018) speaks of trees. If you remove a species of tree from any particular area where there are many species of tree all together, the remaining trees begin to fail. There is this vast network of sharing that exists below the earth, deeply embedded in soil and roots, “an enormous system of resource sharing going on underground” (Klein, 2021). These trees are sharing not just what is required for survival but also sharing that which allows these complex systems to thrive, relying on one another, and not just the trees that are healthy, but also sending nutrients to those trees who are injured or “failing to thrive” (Klein, 2021). In other words, trees care for their own but not just their own—they touch other trees through this complex, symbiotic system that we evolved humans have not begun to know. We need to pay more attention to trees. And what we resemble will hold us when we are us no longer. (Powers, 2018, p. 497)

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I wish I could tell him that I have talked to my mom lately. But I can no longer tell him that I have, and so I brought my dad home. 3 Home/SICK Home—\ ˈhōm—noun 1. one’s place of residence 2. a familiar or usual setting (Merriam-Webster, 2022c). And as I write this into existence, those definitions do not do this concept of home, justice. Home can be a person. A place. A smell. A song. An experience. A sound. A taste. A memory. A story. It is something that can be re-lived over and again in one’s mind, but rarely is it possible to be exactly replicated, even on paper, even with other people who lived that same memory. And as ­Haraway (2016) writes, It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories (p. 12). And these things are good. And some just aren’t. And it is still home. I picked a dandelion and gave it to my dad and told him to make a wish and he held it in front of his face with two hands and closed his eyes as if praying and then looked at me and threw it over his shoulder. Dad! You’re supposed to blow on it! He picks it up and blows and blows And I wonder if his wish came true and if he’d remember if it did. Homesick—\ ˈhōm-ˌsik—adjective 1. longing for home and family while absent from them (Merriam-Webster, 2022d).

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The definition of homesick doesn’t mention how you can be homesick for a person even when they are right there in the room beside you. In this way, maybe home is less a place than the feelings that occur within those spaces. My mom and dad sold the house I grew up in and while I have often thought I’d move back to Maryland and buy their home—it is not the same. The stomping grounds where I grew up, across from the railroad tracks where we’d have balancing contests as we walked the ties, pretending a train was coming. That is now a bike trail. The yard I played hide and seek in, and later begrudgingly mowed for movie or lip gloss money, complaining the entire time, was divided into two lots when sold. I have the memories, both good and bad, of growing up in that little house on Light Street Avenue. Of waking up an hour before the bus and putting on roller skates and skating on a newly poured slab of asphalt, unbothered. These things are good, but they remain within me for that is the only place I can return to these moments, these memories. Today my dad asked me if I have talked to my mom lately. He also asked me who is taking care of his house. He thanked me for coming so far to visit him. I am only now five minutes away. Home for my dad is now a local memory care facility. He has no life insurance, no nest egg, no savings. And I never thought to ask him about those things because I was growing up at the same time he was growing old. And bringing him here to the facility was initially just to keep him safe through this pandemic, for his broken foot to heal from that last fall, and I don’t remember the moment when I realized he may never leave. Is home where you live, or is home where you go to die? Powers (2018) writes of wonder. Of trees and their intricate interconnections and dependence on each other. The strength in roots—often gnarled and inextricably bound – roots that we often do not even see or consider. And his story of trees is also a human story, threads of care, caregiving, wounding, neglect, rebirth, sharing, touching and giving—and how our stories often are our roots, and it is in our telling and retelling that we, donate our riches, just as trees do, Before it dies, a Douglas-Fir, half a millennium old, will send its storehouse of chemicals back down into its roots and out through its fungal partners, donating its riches to the community pool in a last will and testament. We might well call these ancient benefactors giving trees. (p. 221)

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Stories are a human kind of giving tree. Last March, I had to return to the home where he had lived for the past few years. We had decided to sell his home so there was money to help pay to keep him in memory care. It is not the home I grew up in. That is from another time, another place. I had never been in this home when my parents were whole and well. I sift through my mother’s makeup dresser, opening beauty products my mother once used— searching, seeking the smell of her. I clean chocolate fingerprints off nearly everything that does not move. I box, package, wrap, discard, hold, grasp, inhale a life I was not privy to, but which still left its imprint, its impression. And on the final night, before we leave to return to our Alabama home—I climb on a rickety stool and using a black Sharpie marker, write on the ledge of the door jamb that was once the entrance to the bedroom they shared - Russ and Bev were here. THEY LIVED. And these things are good. I brought my dad home—even though it is not the home that fills the memories that remain. Those memories are wrapped up in Maryland sunshine and the smell of Old Bay and the sound of newspaper being laid over a picnic table, hefting piping hot, brown paper bags, heavy with the weight of steamed crabs on Father’s Day, or of a pig tailed girl riding alongside her dad on his paving machine, the smell of hot asphalt as it steams from under the machine, and feeling like there was nothing better, “for memory is always a collaboration in process” (Powers, 2018, p. 324). Powers (2018) speaks a truth into black and white when he writes, “Home has gone wherever their father went” (p. 43). Went. Goes. Is. There was nothing better. And these memories will go when I go. So, home is within me. 4 Touch A pine sapling brought home in a crumpled paper bag. For Arbor Day, she said. We took this puny pine and planted her deep in the soil. And she grew so slow and sure a secret shared by two.

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And then one day she was gone. Discarded as a weed in a spring cleanup I did not notice until I felt her absence.

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I lost a former student last year. She was murdered in a hit and run accident in Texas. Run over and left for dead and then run over again. Only one person stopped. She had no identifying information on her. Instead, a picture of her naked body with her tattoo showing was posted on a site for unidentified persons. She was listed as male. She was absolutely not. We buried her on a cold January morning. More than a month after she died. We wore yellow for she was all things sunshine. She still is.

…

And I am confronted with this idea of touch. Something I initially equated with the physical, but it is not always. We touch lives and create and recreate worlds through the power of touch—and it can be physical, but more often it is in words, in deeds, in care, in concern, in love, in hate, and all of the in-­betweens. And at a time when we were sheltered in place; when we were masked and sometimes gloved, and alone with our thoughts and fears, it was as Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) writes, “the absence of physical contact can be felt as a manifestation of touch” (p. 99). Touch—\ ˈtəch—Verb 1. to bring a bodily part into contact with, especially so as to perceive through the tactile sense: handle or feel gently usually with the intent to understand or appreciate. 2. to leave a mark or impression on (Merriam-Webster, 2022e). But it is not just the absence of touch, for “if seeing stands for believing, touching stands for feeling” (2017, p. 102). Touch during a time when touch was antithetical to survival and yet, how do we survive without touch? Or maybe it is

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more a redefining of what it means to touch. That in the absence of a direct physical connection, we create or re-create these connections just as trees do. I did not touch my dad for nearly an entire year after he entered the memory care facility he now calls home. Instead, we would each place a hand on the plexiglass wall that divided us during our every other day visits. An impression left of oils from skin, and chocolate. Maybe it is the second definition, of touch as the leaving of an impression, that has mattered the most throughout this time. This pandemic is not over. Numbers are up as I write this and I think back to when I was drowning in research for my dissertation and preparing for my defense, when I had two ­college-aged daughters who were battling the virus, quarantined in the same hotel, different hotel rooms, and me being torn by wanting to scale the hotel walls to care for my sick, frightened children, to ply them with boxed chicken noodle soup with dehydrated chicken bits, and fizzing ginger ale in a cold, sweating glass. I remember these moments that seem so far away and yet are not yet done as “the narrowest window of time in which to see them, before these things that never were turn into things that have always been” (Powers, 2018, p. 96). I graduated to a nearly non-existent job market. During a pandemic against a culture of hostility and ignorance and the removal of rights I had come to take for granted, and certain voices that became a background hum, like a mosquito or fly that incessantly buzzes. Sheltered in place but not sheltered— battered from a barrage of daily news reports that spoke truth to the masses depending on the channel, where “the cruelty of frightened humans get her down” (Powers, 2018, p. 124). My mom did not live to see me earn this PhD. My dad is here but does not understand it. When I bring it up, he just wants a business card. Had I known it would only take a business card to please him, I’d have made one up a long time ago. I was warned of the difficulty of obtaining jobs in academia, and to not take it personally, by some scholar/humans who are amongst the very best people I know. And it still bites, to be consistently rejected by jobs that I do not even really want, sight unseen. And a huge part of that resume speaks of spending nearly half my life as a stay at home mom. Work that is not valued, indeed, it is a “devalued doing, often taken for granted if not rendered invisible” (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017, p. 53). I am the invisible woman whose labors do not count except as a measure of what not to do. Not good enough. Good Enough. More than you even realize. And yet, this academic experience—as student, scholar, writer, thinker, teacher, underpaid adjunct—these are things I never imagined for myself, in any world, at any time, and they are mine. Powers (2018) writes of the power

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of people and words—another form of touch—“You have given me a thing I could never have imagined before I knew you. It’s like I had the word “book,” and you put one in my hands. I had the word “game,” and you taught me how to play” (p. 70). I write and think with the most gifted, giving group of women/ scholars that are on this planet and they appreciate all I am, as I am. It all knots together—that girl from so many yesterday’s ago who, now, sees possibilities where once there were none. New shoots on branches that I never even realized were there—growing all along, for “trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible” (Powers, 2018, p. 89). And as heavy as these past few years have been, there is still so much that is good, that is right and that allows me to remain grateful even when at my most ungracious. My dad is here and he is finally near me, and our visits are spent full of song, laughter, and my still cleaning those same chocolate fingerprints I found throughout his Pennsylvania home. There was a time when, as I watched friends die from this dreadful virus, I prayed to live long enough for a vaccine, and I am now fully vaccinated, though I remain watchful and wary of this ever mutating virus. I have watched three of five children get married during this season of COVID-19 though not remotely in the ways they have imagined but maybe more beautiful for exactly that. And I am an adjunct at a university I love doing the teaching and writing that I also love even though a full teaching load as an adjunct pays less than my graduate teaching assistantship and I find myself at the mercy of others to remember I am here, to be seen, to be placed in a spot for another semester. Today my dad asked me if I had talked to my mom lately. Today my dad asked me if I had talked to my mom lately. Today my dad asked me if I had talked to my mom lately. I wish I could have told him I had talked to my mom lately. And still these things are so, so very good. References Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble. Duke University Press. Klein, E. (2021). Ezra Klein interviews Richard Powers. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviewsrichard-powers.html

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Merriam-Webster. (2022a). Care. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/care Merriam-Webster. (2022b). Caregiver. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ caregiver Merriam-Webster. (2022c). Home. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/home Merriam-Webster. (2022d). Homesick. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ homesick Merriam-Webster. (2022e). Touch. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/touch Powers, R. (2018). The overstory. Random House. http://www.richardpowers.net/theoverstory/ Puig, B. M. (2017). Matters of care: Speculative ethics in more than human worlds. University of Minnesota Press.

Epilogue Kerry Crawford and Leah Windsor 1 How Might We Envision a Kinder and More Equitable Future for Mothers in Academia? What might a kinder, more humane and equitable future for mothers in academia look like? This is a future we have devoted years to envisioning, discussing, and, hopefully, helping to shape. In writing the epilogue for this important book, we welcome the opportunity to offer a call to action. As the preceding chapters have illustrated so clearly, academia needs to change. The academy as a profession and an institution is a patriarchal structure that perpetuates bias at every rank and stage. In patriarchal structures, heterosexual men from privileged racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic identities command power and influence. The longitudinal history of their successes and paths to achieving them serve as the standard by which everyone else is judged. In academia, this central, normative identity is best envisioned as the image of the contemplative white man who spends his days siloed in his office in the company of his books and his thoughts. There is no need to hurry to school pick-ups; no threat of daycare calling to alert him of his toddler’s fever; and no everlasting mental to-do list of groceries, dentist appointments, and ballet class registration dates, often because his “support spouse” takes care of these things. Empirical research amplifies this mental image: children have negative effects on women’s careers, and positive effects on men’s (Hesli & Lee, 2011). This prototypical tenured professor lives the life of the mind. In accordance with this professorial ideal type, anyone who lives a life both on and off campus, straddling the two worlds, is perceived as less serious about their scholarly commitments and “mommy-tracked” (Crawford & Windsor, 2021b). The reality, of course, presents a stark contrast to the image of the tweedclad professor, with women, LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and parent scholars ascending the academic ranks in increasing numbers. As Sobieraj (2020) suggests, the academy perceives women as threats because they are transgressing norms in a traditionally male space, and this is amplified for women with intersectional identities and those who do not follow traditional gender norms and flout the gender double bind (Diekman 2007). But they do so more precariously, confronted with the profession’s many ‘chutes’—as we call the daily obstacles and sudden and often unexpected perils that disrupt a scholar’s career trajectory, often leading to an exit from the game (of academia) (Crawford & Windsor,

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2020; Windsor et al., 2021; Windsor & Crawford, 2020). These daily challenges are often difficult to quantify and measure (Crawford & Windsor, 2021a). Moreover, they are often discounted and dismissed as idiosyncratic or particular to the individual scholar when they are systemic and ubiquitous in the profession. Women, parents, and historically excluded scholars encounter multiple forms of bias including, but not limited to, hiring discrimination, bias in teaching evaluations, pay inequality, gender gaps in citations and inclusion in syllabi, and a disproportionate abundance of lower profile service assignments (Ainley et al., 2017; Crawford & Windsor 2021a; Hesli & Lee, 2011; Madera et al., 2009; Maliniak et al., 2013; Merritt, 2008; Mitchell et al., 2013; Mitchell & Hesli, 2013; Mitchell & Martin, 2018; Voeten 2013). Crawford and Windsor (2021a) identify these more quantifiable biases as higher-order ones that compound with the daily, less visible, lower-order struggles. These often taboo topics include the physical and emotional burdens imposed by infertility and miscarriage (Gregory, 2015; Silver-Greenberg & Kitroeff, 2018; von Stein, 2013; Winegar, 2016), medically complicated pregnancies (Hoekzema et al., 2017), roller coaster adoption processes (Crawford & Windsor, 2021a), cognitive/ mental load and emotional labor (Kim et al., 2018; Wong, 2018), the revolving door of childhood illnesses and sick days (Anderson, 2016; Epifanio & Troeger, 2013; Mason et al., 2013; Wolfinger, 2013), geographic distance from family and community support networks (Kulis & Sicotte, 2002), and inequitably applied family and medical leave policies (Antecol et al., 2016). The compound effects of daily struggles and entrenched biases can force women, parents, and historically excluded scholars out of the profession. We argue that the conventional metaphor of the “leaky pipeline” looks more like Academic Chutes and Ladders, as scholars’ paths to and through the profession are neither linear nor uniform and the opportunities and obstacles they encounter are unique and sometimes unexpected (Clark Blickenstaff, 2005; Hancock et al., 2013; The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2014; Windsor et al., 2021). To prevent talented scholars from falling down the chutes and exiting— or getting pushed out of—the profession, it is essential that we consider and undertake the actions, policy changes, and informal efforts that will create a kinder and more equitable academia. In focusing on women and mothers, we acknowledge the reality that the ascent from undergraduate student, through graduate training, to full professor, is steeper and more treacherous for academics who identify as women and, especially, as mothers. Just as the editors of this book acknowledged in the introduction, the use of the term “mother” is necessarily broad and encompasses people of all genders who take on a “mothering” role. We reiterate that, in adopting a focus on mothers, we must also be careful to recognize that women are not uniquely responsible for doing

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the work of making academia kinder, more humane and equitable, by and for themselves (Scalera Elliott et al., 2022). An equitable and inclusive profession is not just a women’s issue. The “men in the middle” (Windsor & Thies, 2021)— especially those who are tenured and sympathetic to the gendered biases that women and parent scholars face—occupy a pivotal role in changing departmental, university, and professional norms and rules. Furthermore, biases against women and parents are also intersectional and are rooted in the same systemic structures that constrain other historically excluded populations, such as BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and first generation scholars. Ultimately, the work of creating a more equitable and humane academia benefits all within it. 2

Concrete Steps toward a Kinder Academia

To bring our call to action to a close, we propose the following as next steps in the path to a kinder, more equitable, and more humane academia for mothers, for parents of all genders, and for historically excluded scholars. 2.1  Policies Should Be Transparent, Clearly Communicated, and Equitably Applied In all our work, we urge campus decision-makers, such as department chairs, deans, conference organizers, and other administrators, to ensure that policies regulating accommodations, hiring decisions, tenure, promotion, and family and medical leave, are transparent, clearly communicated, and equitably applied (Crawford & Windsor, 2021a). Policy enforcement or resource access and allocation will be uneven at best if wording is ambiguous or unclear, or inaccessibly buried deep within the organization’s website. Clear communication regarding policies and resources, including where campus community members can access information and where they may go with questions, similarly improves understanding and ensures that everyone knows where and how to find the (written) rules of the academic game. The last piece is the most consequential and also the most difficult: policies must be applied and resources must be provided equitably. To take one example: universal parental leave, through which birth parents and non-birth parents alike receive paid time-off after a child’s birth or adoption, is a step toward gender equality and an effort to ensure that parenting is not viewed as a burden that women alone must carry. It is important to ensure that parents on leave treat this time as time to bond with a new child, to recover physically from childbirth (if applicable), and to settle into a new household rhythm. Using this time to publish, go on the job market, or otherwise boost

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scholarly productivity—activities that have been widely anecdotally reported as common among men+ faculty—reinforces the “motherhood penalty,” since those who need to use leave to recover and feed a new baby cannot feasibly use their leave time as time to get ahead professionally. Many women+ elect to forego parental/maternity leave because of the perception that this serves as a “bonus year” on the tenure clock, or a sign of academic weakness. Department and campus norms and policies that encourage using family leave time as family leave time, discourage research during this time, and advocate abstaining from contacting parents on leave for work matters, help to promote equitable parental leave. Refraining from penalizing women+ for a lack of productivity during their protected family leave time in their annual evaluations and tenure/promotion assessments is necessary for supporting mothers. 2.2 Formal and Informal Mentorship Efforts Mentorship is a lifeline that helps scholars at all levels avoid the academic chutes. When designed and implemented to maximize inclusiveness and equity, both formal and informal mentorship efforts help scholars navigate the stress of graduate school, working remotely with children at home in a pandemic, the tenure and promotion process, and most other professional and personal hurdles. Formal mentorship efforts include on-campus advising and mentorship of students and early career scholars (Eby et al., 2007), professional development workshops that aim to keep women and historically excluded scholars in the profession (Leeds et al., 2014), and organized networks that focus on a specific research area. Informal mentorship is more spontaneous (Allen et al., 2006; Eby et al., 2007; Scalera Elliott et al., 2022). These networks and interactions often arise from shared research interests or identities (e.g. parents or conference karaoke enthusiasts) and in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have proliferated through social media platforms. Informal mentorship may look like a senior scholar tweeting an offer to help graduate students practice their academic job talks via Zoom, conference attendees meeting for coffee, or women faculty making a plan to spend their Friday afternoons writing together so they can help motivate each other to meet their individual deadlines. Traditionally, mentorship programs that have worked to keep women in academia have almost always been designed and implemented by women, underscoring the assumption that creating a kinder and more equitable profession that welcomes women and, especially mothers, is work that should be done by women (Scalera Elliott et al., 2022; Windsor & Thies, 2021). Formal university mentorship networks also support women and historically excluded scholars. Funding agencies like the National Science Foundation have traditionally

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supported the formation of mentorship programs in STEM fields, with great success in moving the needle for increasing gender equity for women in STEM. The social sciences and humanities still lag behind, however. Individual efforts to create university-wide mentorship networks have helped women and historically excluded scholars. It is worth reiterating here that any effort to make academia more inclusive benefits everyone and, accordingly, it is time for men colleagues to join more visibly in such efforts. 2.3 Moving Forward The COVID-19 pandemic forced the academy to innovate, to focus on new ways to make teaching and learning more accessible in the midst of a crisis. It also compounded and exposed the burnout experienced by scholars who carry a disproportionate burden for the academic family (Miller, 2021). We reject the notion that post-pandemic practices should ‘go back to normal’ because the old normal was broken. We need to move beyond the status quo and create a system that serves everyone, better. We need to maintain the innovations that kept colleges and universities afloat through the pandemic, rather than to return to an arbitrary perception of ‘normal’ that will revoke some of the safety nets put into place in the past three years. As a community and a profession, we must move forward together. References Ainley, K., Danewid, I., & Yao, J. (2017). Challenging the gender citation gap: What journals can do. International Affairs Blog. https://medium.com/international-affairs-blog/ challenging-the-gender- citation-gap-what-journals-can-do-f79e0b831055 Allen, T. D., Eby, L. T., & Lentz, E. (2006). Mentorship behaviors and mentorship quality associated with formal mentoring programs: Closing the gap between research and practice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(3), 567–578. https://doi.org/ 10.1037/0021-9010.91.3.567 Anderson, J. (2016, October 11). The ultimate efficiency hack: Have kids (We’re serious) women with children outperform those who don’t have children over a 30-Year career research shows. Quartz. https://qz.com/802254/the-ultimate-efficiencyhack-have-kids/ Antecol, H., Bedard, K., & Stearns, J. (2016). Equal but inequitable: Who benefits from gender-neutral tenure clock stopping policies? IZA Discussion Papers. Clark Blickenstaff, J. (2005). Women and science careers: Leaky pipeline or gender filter? Gender and Education, 17(4), 369–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250500145072

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Crawford, K. F., & Windsor, L. (2020, May 14). We need to talk: Gender, bias and best practices for supporting academic parents. International Affairs Blog, Medium. https://medium.com/international-affairs-blog/we-need-to-talk-gender-bias-andbest-practices-for-supporting-academic-parents-1d833d34f5a Crawford, K. F., Windsor, L. C. (2021a). The PhD parenthood trap: Caught between work and family in academia. Georgetown University Press. Crawford, K. F., & Windsor, L. C. (2021b, September 27). The academy as a patriarchal structure. International Affairs Blog. https://medium.com/international-affairs-blog/ the-academy-as-a-patriarchal-structure-66bb98080797 Diekman, A. B. (2007). Negotiating the double bind: Interpersonal and instrumental evaluations of dominance. Sex Roles, 56(9), 551–561. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11199-007-9198-0 Eby, L. T., Rhodes, J. E., & Allen, T. D. (2007). Definition and evolution of mentoring. In T. D. Allen & L. T. Eby (Eds.), The Blackwell handbook of mentoring (pp. 7–20). Blackwell. Epifanio, M., & Troeger, V. E. (2013). How much do children really cost? Maternity benefits and career opportunities of women in academia. 171. CAGE (Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy) Online Working Paper Series. https://ideas.repec.org/p/cge/wacage/171.html Gregory, V. (2015, June). Surviving a failed pregnancy. Harper’s Magazine. https://harpers.org/archive/2015/06/surviving-a-failed-pregnancy/ Hancock, K. J., Baum, M. A., & Breuning, M. (2013). Women and pre-tenure scholarly productivity in international studies: An investigation into the leaky career pipeline. International Studies Perspectives, 14(4), 507–527. https://doi.org/10.1111/insp.12002 Hesli, V. L., & Lee, J. M. (2011). Faculty research productivity: Why do some of our colleagues publish more than others? PS: Political Science & Politics, 44(2), 393–408. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096511000242 Hoekzema, E., Barba-Müller, E., Pozzobon, C., Picado, M., Lucco, F., García-García, D., Soliva, J. C., Tobeña, A., Desco, M., Crone, E. A., Ballesteros, A., Carmona, S., & Vilarroya, O. (2017). Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure. Nature Neuroscience, 20(2), 287–296. Kim, J. Y., Fitzsimons, G. M., & Kay, A. C. (2018). Lean in messages increase attributions of women’s responsibility for gender inequality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(6), 974–1001. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000129 Kulis, S., & Sicotte, D. (2002). Women scientists in academia: Geographically constrained to big cities, college clusters, or the coasts? Research in Higher Education, 43(1), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013097716317 Leeds, B. A., Schwindt-Bayer, L., Alvarez, R. M., & Barnes, T. D. (2014, November 23). The importance of mentoring. OUP Blog. https://blog.oup.com/2014/11/mentorshipacademic-career-political-science/

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Madera, J. M., Hebl, M. R., & Martin, R. C. (2009). Gender and letters of recommendation for academia: Agentic and communal differences. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(6), 1591–1599. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016539 Maliniak, D., Powers, R., & Walter, B. F. (2013). The gender citation gap in international relations. International Organization, 67(4), 889–922. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0020818313000209 Mason, M. A., Wolfinger, N. H., & Goulden, M. (2013). Do babies matter? Gender and family in the ivory tower. Rutgers University Press. Merritt, D. J. (2008). Bias, the brain, and student evaluations of teaching. St. John’s Law Review, 82, 235–288. Miller, C. C. (2021, May 18). The pandemic created a child-care crisis. Mothers bore the burden. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/17/ upshot/women-workforce-employment-covid.html Mitchell, K. M. W., & Martin, J. (2018). Gender bias in student evaluations. PS: Political Science & Politics, 51(3), 648–652. https://doi.org/10.1017/S104909651800001X Mitchell, S. M., & Hesli, V. L. (2013). Women don’t ask? Women don’t say no? Bargaining and service in the political science profession. PS: Political Science & Politics, 46(2), 355–369. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096513000073 Mitchell, S. M., Lange, S., & Brus, H. (2013). Gendered citation patterns in international relations journals. International Studies Perspectives, 14(4), 485–492. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/insp.12026 Scalera Elliott, J., Mitchell, S. M., Dion, M. L., Vargas, T. R., Krupnikov, Y., Milita, K., Ryan, J. B., Smith, V., Style, H., Crawford, K. F., Windsor, L. C., Fattore, C., Breuning, M., & Ramos, J. (2022). Gendered dynamics of academic networks. International Studies Perspectives, ekac009. https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekac009 Silver-Greenberg, J., & Kitroeff, N. (2018, October 21). Miscarrying at work: The physical toll of pregnancy discrimination. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2018/10/21/business/pregnancy-discrimination-miscarriages.html Sobieraj, S. (2020). Credible threat: Attacks against women online and the future of democracy. Oxford University Press. The London School of Economics and Political Science. (2014, March 14). The leaky pipeline: Women in academia. Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ equityDiversityInclusion/2014/03/the-leaky-pipeline-women-in-academia/ Voeten, E. (2013, September 30). Introducing the monkey cage gender gap symposium. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/ wp/2013/09/30/introducing-the-monkey-cage-gender-gap-symposium/ von Stein, J. (2013, January 12). When bad things happen to untenured people. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/When-BadThings-Happen-to/136539.

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Windsor, L. C., & Crawford, K. F. (2020, March 23). Snow days, holidays and pandemic quarantines: Why we need to be looking after parents. Medium. https://medium.com/international-affairs-blog/snow-days-holidays-andpandemic-quarantines-why-we-need-to-be-looking-after-parents-a3dc38413548 Windsor, L. C., Crawford, K. F., & Breuning, M. (2021). Not a leaky pipeline! Academic success is a game of chutes and ladders. PS: Political Science & Politics, 54(3), 509– 512. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096521000081 Windsor, L. C., & Thies, C. G. (2021). Mentorship: “Men in the middle” and their role as allies in addressing gender bias. PS: Political Science & Politics, 54(3), 502–504. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096521000044 Winegar, J. (2016, November 29). The miscarriage penalty. The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Miscarriage-Penalty/238526 Wolfinger, N. H. (2013, July 29). For female scientists, there’s no good time to have children. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/07/ for-female-scientists-theres-no-good-time-to-have-children/278165/ Wong, K. (2018, December 6). There’s a stress gap between men and women. Here’s why it’s important. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/ smarter-living/stress-gap-women-men.html

Index adoption 122, 148, 178, 179 autoethnography 64, 87

LGBTQ+/LGBTQIA+ 39, 40, 64, 146, 147, 177, 179

belonging 85, 98, 158, 168 BIPOC 177, 179 Black woman 10, 81, 85, 87–91, 97

miscarriage 101, 102, 104–111, 178 mommy-tracked 177 motherscholar vii–ix, 11, 141, 142, 152, 154 multicultural 121, 159

caregiving 66, 167, 171 childcare 3, 43, 115, 118, 122, 123, 151 collaboration 143, 144, 150, 152, 172 conceptual framework 157 conservative 158, 159, 161 cross-culture 10, 158 culture 10, 84, 88, 95, 116, 122, 145, 157–159, 161, 174

narrative inquiry 2, 8, 11, 90, 91, 98, 103, 110, 113, 116 not-mother 1, 2 online learning 93, 156

dementia 11, 168 dystopia 10, 112, 113

pain vii, viii, 3, 7, 9, 11, 55, 76, 89, 102, 104, 123 poetry ix, 2, 6, 10, 11, 19, 21–23, 27, 35, 47, 50, 51, 72 precarity 8–10, 50, 51, 71–73, 79, 85, 157

ethnicity 2, 177 event-space 81–83, 85

queer viii, 4, 8–10, 39, 57, 60, 62, 67, 141–146, 148, 150–154

fabulation/fabulative 6–8, 19, 32 family and medical leave 178, 179 first-generation/first generation 88, 179 fractals 157

race vii, 2, 4, 25, 79, 149

hope vii–ix, 7–11, 46, 47, 50, 81, 89, 90, 92, 94, 98, 104, 106, 110, 116, 118, 128, 146, 152–154, 162, 177 immigration 9 intersectional 10, 55, 79, 81, 151, 153, 177, 179 kinning 19, 21, 22, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 34 kinship 10, 73, 113, 122

second shift 3, 4 speculative feminism 7 speculative fiction 8, 75, 113, 114 storytelling 7 Strong Black Woman (SBW) trope 89, 90, 97, 98 supercomplexity 162 superwoman 10, 87 transnational 10 Women of Color 2

Academic Mothering Fabulating Futures for Higher Education

Kelly W. Guyotte, Stephanie Anne Shelton, Shelly Melchio and Carlson H. Coogler (Eds.)

Inspired by those who mothered before and through the COVID-19 pandem is a book about, for, and with those who live diffferent embodiments of aca mothering—mothers, othermothers, academic mothers, and mothering academ this book, mothering is defijined broadly, encompassing those who are biologic legally mothers with children; those who are “not-mother” but who nonetheless stand and practice mothering; those who do identify as mothers but not as w and all those who take on mothering roles in academia and beyond.

Through poetry and prose, fijiction and nonfijiction, image and text, the auth this edited book creatively explore academic mothering through their uniqu experiences, illuminating three ideas that comprise the three sections of this mothering as practice, mothering in precarity, and mothering as relational. Th considering—and in many cases, writing about and through—their own mot practices, this diverse collection of authors critique the systemic failures of aca in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, fabulating new possibilities that env future in which mothering is valued and supported in (and by) higher educatio

“Academic Mothering: Fabulating Futures for Higher Education is a beautiful, stirrin powerful collection. The lessons about mothering and academia transcend the bou the pandemic that inspired this project. An important contribution.” – Patricia Leavy Author of Re/Invention: Methods of Social Fiction

“This series of essays are a welcome addition to the growing fijield of MotherScholar s ship. This book should be on the shelf of every MotherScholar, mothering research administrator as it captures the essence of what it means to be a mother in the acad Sarah S. LeBlanc, Associate Professor, Purdue University Fort Wayne

“I immediately connected to the stories, struggles, and triumphs shared in this Institutions of Higher Education must embrace the paradigm shift from a homogenou monolith to a diverse, inclusive, and empowering avenue for women to make their m the world of higher education, and this book is an important facilitator for that cha Chrissy Cross, Associate Professor in Education Studies, Stephen F. Austin State Uni Cover illustration: Image by Sara Scott Shields ISBN 978-90-04-54744-5

- 978-90-04 Downloaded from Brill.com 12/04/2023 02 via Western Un