Mothers, Mothering and Climate Change

Mothers, Mothering and Climate Change is as much about climate change as it is about the importance of community care and intergenerational justice. Considering climate change and mothering, how do we hold space for seemingly conflicting stories, ones that attempt to document and stall an inevitable end while others focus on new beginnings? Can mothering encompass both conditions, be pulled in opposite directions, and exist within this tension? Are we not, yet again, asking mothers to do it all? In response, this collection answers these questions and explores them in an interdisciplinary anthology that brings together voices of concerned matricentric feminist theorists, researchers, and activists from a wide range of disciplines and fields. These include anthropology, women’ s and gender studies, cultural studies, literary studies, social sciences and humanities. Creative contributions complement academic writing and include personal essay/reflection, academic essay, memoir, creative non-fiction, diary style, poetry, art, photography, and hybrid genres.

Sarah Marie Wiebe, PhD is an Associate Professor, writer, researcher, mixed media storyteller and political ecologist based in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include Climate CARE (Community Actions and Responses to Extreme weather events), public engagement, participatory governance and environmental justice. She is the Co-Founder of the FERN collaborative (Feminist Environmental Research Network) and her most recently published book with Fernwood Press is entitled Hot Mess: Mothering through a Code Red Climate Emergency. Carolina Toscano, PhD received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington. She teaches writing instruction and literature in the English department at Saint Louis University’ s Madrid Campus and oversees the first-year writing program and the student writing center. Carolina studies feminist maternal theory, migration, and climate change in contemporary literature from Spain, Latin America, and the US.

of Contents Author Biography Introduction Carolina Toscano and Sarah Marie Wiebe Poetry, Artwork, and Photography 1. Poetry Pulkita Anand 2. Watercolour Dara Herman Zierlein 3. Photography Karuline Peruzzo Memoir and Reflection 4. Mothers of the Scorched Earth: Love in Times of Drought and Flame Alyssa Perez-Whiting 5. Fire, Fury, and Feminism: Navigating Motherhood, Womanhood, and Fires in a Changing Climate Kelsey Winter 6. The Brain on Belief: A Personal Journey to the Grey Area How the Rhetoric of Environmental and Feminist Movements Shaped My Family Planning E. Lorann Nuckols Representations of Mothering and Climate Change in Literature 7. Imagining motherhood in a post-apocalyptic world: reifying and resisting normative motherhood in the climate-change novels Clean Air by Sarah Blake and The New Wilderness by Diane Cook Andrea O’ Reilly 8. From Eco-Anxiety to Eco-Optimism: Affect, Action, and Mothering Amidst Climate Chaos in Distancia de rescate Kate Ostrom 9. "I Am This Animal": Evolving Ecogothic Motherhood and Femininity in Female Werewolf Texts Jessi Brock Mothers, Mothering, Climate Change and Resistance 10. ReGeneraphilia: Loving Respect for ReGenerating Life Irene Friesen Wolfstone 11. Care-Based Creative Futures: Regenerative Maternal Ethics Jessica Spring Weappa 12. Water, Oil, Breast Milk: Natural Resources from Mother (Earth) Thea Jones 13. Caught between a rock and a hot place: How motherscholars engage in individual, collective, or other (in)actions to address climate precarity MotherScholarCollective 14. Aunties, Ancestors, and Small Acts: Indigenous Girls’ Lessons on Care in a Time of Crisis Samantha Matharoo 15. Embodied Futures: My pregnant body chooses hope Erynne M. Gilpin Conclusion Sarah Marie Wiebe and Carolina Toscano Contributor Notes