Constructing the (M)other: Narratives of Disability, Motherhood, and the Politics of «Normal»(22 Disability Studies in Education)

Constructing the (M)other is a collection of personal narratives about motherhood in the context of a society in which disability holds a stigmatized position. From multiple vantage points, these autoethnographies reveal how ableist beliefs about disability are institutionally upheld and reified. Collectively they seek to call attention to a patriarchal surveillance of mothering, challenge the trope of the good mother, and dismantle the constructed hierarchy of acceptable children. The stories contained in this volume are counter-narratives of resistance—they are the devices through which mothers push back. Rejecting notions of the otherness of their children, in these essays, mothers negotiate their identities and claim access to the category of normative motherhood. Readers are likely to experience dissonance, have their assumptions about disability challenged, and find their parameters of normalcy transformed.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures – Acknowledgments – Linda Ware: Foreword: "There was this mother, one mother…" – Priya Lalvani: Introduction: Mother: The Story – Tammy Bachrach: Standard Deviation: Stigma, Surveillance, and the Good Mother Daughter – Bernadette Macartney: West Side Story (Down Under) – Erin McCloskey: Selves-Advocacy and the Meeting Space – Maria T. Timberlake: An Unexpected Journey with My Mother – Elizabeth A. Wheeler: Masculinity at the Orthopedic Preschool – LaChan V. Hannon: Mothering While Black: Shapeshifting Amid Ableism, Racism, and Autism – Elaine Gerber: Unbecoming Mother: Selected Notes on Miscarriage and Infertility – María Cioè-Peña/Laura Castro Santamaría: Bad Mother – Priya Lalvani: The Strange Case of the Two Journals: Ableism, Academia, and the Birth of a Child – Negar Irani/Negin Hosseini Goodrich: Becoming Anahita: A Persian Mother’s Pilgrimage to Autism Pride – Susan Baglieri: Mothering in the Panopticon – Monika Tiwari: Karma, Dogma, and the Perfect Child – Linnéa Franits: Mother Is Wise: How Disability Constructs Maternal Identity – Diane Linder Berman/David J. Connor: Typicality and the (Br)other – Carol Rogers-Shaw: Confessions of an Inept Supermom – Priya Lalvani: Epilogue: "Tell Me About When I Was Born": (Mostly) True Tales About How We Became a Family – Contributors.

About the Author :
Priya Lalvani, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at Montclair State University. She was the recipient of the Emerging Scholar in Disability Studies Award in 2015. Her work is published widely in journals including: Disability and Society, Disability Studies Quarterly, and Equity and Excellence in Education.

Review :
“This stunning collection of mother narratives illuminates the intimate space where motherhood, disability, and society intersect. Lalvani has drawn together oft-untold stories from culturally diverse mothers of children with disabilities who share what it means to negotiate shifting and complex cultural constructions of motherhood outside the socially-defined ideal. Constructing the (M)other is a fresh and significant contribution to a disability studies perspective on mothers and children with disabilities and a must-read for all educators committed to meaningful parent-professional partnerships.”—Jan Valle, Professor of Inclusive Education and Disability Studies, City College of New York “Priya Lalvani has curated a gift—a critical carnival of stories. In Constructing the (M)other we meet women weaving lives that blend joy and imagination, battling the ideological syrup of pity/grief/loss, seeking spaces for full recognition of complex, gorgeous, and sometimes struggling children, in a society drunk on fantasies of normal. Lalvani is a brilliant writer who holds together this book where soul-ful and truths-ful women across race/ethnicity/class/language/education/nations, and children with a sparkling range of abilities and needs, animate the pages. This volume is a mirror, a speak back, truth in a post-truth society, a protest, and a celebration. Grab a glass of wine and climb in. I promise you won't want to leave until you get to the most delicious epilogue, that lingers in every cell of my body.”—Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology, Gender/Women's Studies and Urban Education, The Graduate Center, CUNY