A (m)Other’s Work Is Becoming Undone: Liminal Belonging and Trans Potentialities

Abstract

In this relational ethnography, we write as two white afab genderqueer/trans parents who often find ourselves at best pulled between spaces and parts of ourselves, and at worst pressured to choose between the false dichotomy of our “illegible” place within transness/queerness and “aparent” place within motherhood. Weaving together autoethnographic vignettes of our lived experiences with the writings of QTBIPOC thinkers and pedagogues and their anti-racist white comrades, we reflect on themes of liminality, loneliness, hope, grieving, and love in mothering, kin, and community building and theorize, as queer trans (m)othering mother-ers, about the trans potentialities of being/becoming-with-longing queerly.

Keywords

revolutionary mothering queer kinship trans parenting critical community relational ethnography

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ahmed

(2006). Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others (1st ed.). Duke University Press Books.

Ahmed

(2015). The cultural politics of emotion (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Anzaldúa

G. E.

(2009). The Gloria Anzaldúa reader ( Keating

, Ed.). Duke University Press. https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU2500538

Belc

K. M.

(2021). The natural mother of the child: A memoir of nonbinary parenthood. Counterpoint.

Bettez

S. C.

(2011). Critical community building: Beyond belonging. Educational Foundations, 25, 3–19.

brown

a. m.

(2019). Pleasure activism: The politics of feeling good. AK Press.

Chowdhury

E. H.

Philipose

(Eds.). (2016). Dissident friendships: Feminism, imperialism, and transnational solidarity. University of Illinois Press.

Collins

P. H.

(1991). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (Repr. d. Ausg. von 1990). Routledge.

Crabtree

Bidwell

Eaveas

(2023). When the land meets the body. Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston. https://halsey.cofc.edu/main-events/wgs-intersections-when-the-land-meets-the-body/

10.

Dominguez

C. M.

(2022). Staying in the trying: Queer kinship solidarity as liberation praxis [Doctoral dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (2719408058). https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/listing.aspx?styp=ti&id=38250

11.

Fineman

(2014). The neutered mother, the sexual family and other twentieth century tragedies. Taylor & Francis. https://books.google.com/books?id=YAtIAwAAQBAJ

12.

Gale

Wyatt

(2019). Autoethnography and activism: Movement, intensity, and potential. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(6), 566–568. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418800754

13.

Gale

Wyatt

(2022). Making trouble with ontogenesis: Collaborative writing, becoming, and concept forming as event. Qualitative Inquiry, 28(1), 80–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004211026898

14.

Gumbs

A. P.

(2010). “We can learn to mother ourselves”: The queer survival of black feminism. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/handle/10161/2398

15.

Gumbs

A. P.

Martens

Williams

(Eds.). (2016). Revolutionary mothering: Love on the front lines. PM Press.

16.

hooks

(2000). All about love: New visions. Women’s Press.

17.

Knott

(2019). Mother is a verb: An unconventional history. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

18.

Lewis

S. A.

(2022). Abolish the family: A manifesto for care and liberation. Verso.

19.

Lewis

S. A.

(2023). Mothering against motherhood: Doula work, xenohospitality and the idea of the momrade. Feminist Theory, 24(1), 68–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/14647001211059520

20.

Lorde

(2007). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed.

21.

Maynard

Simpson

L. B.

(2022). Rehearsals for living. Haymarket Books.

22.

Moraga

(1997). Waiting in the wings: Portrait of a queer motherhood. Firebrand Books.

23.

Nelson

(2009). Bluets. Wave Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=OtVWAwAAQBAJ

24.

Nelson

(2015). The argonauts. Graywolf Press. https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU3904900

25.

Pratt

M. B.

(2013). Crime against nature (Revised ed.). A Midsummer Night’s Press.

26.

Roy

(2020). Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. Haymarket Books.

27.

Sharpe

(2016, November 16). Lose your kin. The New Inquiry. https://thenewinquiry.com/lose-your-kin/

28.

Sheller

(2012). Citizenship from below: Erotic agency and Caribbean freedom. Duke University Press.

29.

Shotwell

(2018, March 2). Claiming bad kin. https://alexisshotwell.com/2018/03/02/claiming-bad-kin/

30.

Skelton

J. W.

(2022). Standing on the shoulders of GIaNTs: Drawing queer and trans education possibilities together [Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto]. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2695026809/abstract/564C8DA0AE8049F6PQ/1

31.

Spillers

H. J.

(1987). Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: An American grammar book. Diacritics, 17(2), 65–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/464747

32.

TallBear

(2018). Making love and relations beyond settler sex and family. In Clarke

A. E.

Haraway

(Eds.), Making kin not population (pp. 145–164). Prickly Paradigm Press.

33.

Tisch

Nayak

M. V.

(2019). Student meets author: Sydney Tisch and Moon Charania. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 21(4), 652–658. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2019.1635900

34.

Wyatt

Gale

. (2016). Getting out of selves: An Assemblage/ethnography? In Jones

S. H.

Adams

T. E.

Ellis

(Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (pp. 300–312). Routledge.