Revolutionizing Motherlines

Revolutionizing Motherlines reflects upon and troubles current and historical understandings of Naomi Ruth Lowinsky’s concept of the motherline that connects mothers to their female ancestors. Complicated histories of erasure and threads of hope are tied together with intellectually engaging and emotionally resonant dialogues about maternal lineage to illuminate previously silenced motherlines of diverse abilities, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, mothering identities, family forms, and parenting practices. The introduction of the concept of “mothervine”, an adaptation of Lowinsky’s motherline, creates a powerful image of winding vines and roots with pruned ends and overgrowths that inform how matricentric feminist scholars can deconstruct patriarchal concepts. By using innovative feminist images and language to define and express experiences of mothering, it revises the past and intervenes in ongoing debates about how to de-centre cisnormative models of lineage. Revolutionizing Motherlines creates a richness of meaning for those engaged in motherwork, and offers new insights into methodology, theory-building, and praxis of maternal scholarship.