Constructing the (M)other

Constructing the (M)other

Narratives of Disability, Motherhood,
and the Politics of Normal

Priya Lalvani, editor

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Berlin

Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Control Number: 2019014328

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the ‘‘Deutsche Nationalbibliografie’’; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

ISSN 1548-7210

ISBN 978-1-4331-6973-1 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4331-6974-8 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-4331-6978-6 (ebook pdf)

ISBN 978-1-4331-6979-3 (epub)

ISBN 978-1-4331-6980-9 (mobi)

DOI 10.3726/b15664

© 2019 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

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All rights reserved.

Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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About the editor

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.

About the book

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.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Foreword: “There was this mother, one mother

Linda Ware

Introduction: Mother: The Story

Priya Lalvani

Chapter One: Standard Deviation: Stigma, Surveillance, and the Good Mother Daughter

Tammy Bachrach

Chapter Two: West Side Story (Down Under)

Bernadette Macartney

Chapter Three: Selves-Advocacy and the Meeting Space

Erin McCloskey

Chapter Four: An Unexpected Journey with My Mother

Maria T. Timberlake

Chapter Five: Masculinity at the Orthopedic Preschool

Elizabeth A. Wheeler←vii | viii→

Chapter Six: Mothering While Black: Shapeshifting Amid Ableism, Racism, and Autism

LaChan V. Hannon

Chapter Seven: Unbecoming Mother: Selected Notes on Miscarriage and Infertility

Elaine Gerber

Chapter Eight: Bad Mother

María Cioè-Peña and Laura Castro Santamaría

Chapter Nine: The Strange Case of the Two Journals: Ableism, Academia, and the Birth of a Child

Priya Lalvani

Chapter Ten: Becoming Anahita: A Persian Mother’s Pilgrimage to Autism Pride

Negar Irani and Negin Hosseini Goodrich

Chapter Eleven: Mothering in the Panopticon

Susan Baglieri

Chapter Twelve: Karma, Dogma, and the Perfect Child

Monika Tiwari

Chapter Thirteen: Mother Is Wise: How Disability Constructs Maternal Identity

Linnéa Franits

Chapter Fourteen: Typicality and the (Br)other

Diane Linder Berman and David J. Connor

Chapter Fifteen: Confessions of an Inept Supermom

Carol Rogers-Shaw

Epilogue: “Tell Me About When I Was Born”: (Mostly) True Tales About How We Became a Family

Priya Lalvani

Contributors←viii | ix→

Figures

Figure 8.1. A letter from Mami.

Figure 13.1. My sister (L) and me (R) on our parents’ laps.

Figure 13.2. My sister and I during her final hospitalization.

Figure 13.3. Bike riding lesson.←ix | x→ ←x | xi→

Acknowledgments

Writing, whether for a book or otherwise, might appear to be a solitary activity. However, an author never writes alone; like all human endeavors, writing is an act of collaboration with one’s environment. Even when we write in (physical) isolation, we feel the presence of those whose ideas influenced our work, the socio-political climate in which the work is undertaken, the audiences (real or imagined) for whom the work is intended, and all those individuals who support us along the way.