Imagining Motherhood in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Literature

Abigail L. Palko is the Associate Director of the Gender Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame, USA. A Faculty Fellow of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and an Affiliate Faculty member of the Department of Africana Studies, she researches and teaches contemporary Irish and Caribbean novels, focusing on their representations of motherhood.

• Introduction: Embryonic Beginnings.- “A mother-of-sufferer”: Subversive Mothering in the Caribbean and Irish Traditions.- Part I: Rejecting Motherhood.- The Traumatized Not-Mother.- The Motherless Not-Mother.- Part II: Redefining Motherhood.- The Lesbian Daughter.- The Lesbian Mother.- Conclusion: “If you can’t trust me with choice, how can you trust me with a child?”.- Works Cited