The way that our care multiplies and extends. I think about my community-my friends, loves, the Black Light Arts Collective-the way we care for each other. That which is queer, she says, is that which does not reproduce the status quo. In fact, she suggests that mothering could be the queerest thing that humans do. In her introduction to the section of the book called “Out (of) line,” Alexis Pauline Gumbs rejects the notion that queerness and mothering are at odds. But “Revolutionary Mothering” offers a broader understanding of mothering. Holding myself to norms generated by a white supremacist, capitalist society often left me feeling inadequate, as is the job of such a system. The epilogue to the book says, “mothering is love by any means necessary.” From the time I became a mother just weeks after my seventeenth birthday, much of my thinking about motherhood centered on the physical, mental, and emotional labor required in parenting my four black children in the face of a racist, violent system of oppression. Recently I was gifted an anthology called “Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines,” edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams. I write, think, and breathe about mothering.
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