The Monstrous Mother: An Exploration of Afro- Caribbean Motherhood in Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) and Halsey Street (2018)

Abstract

In the last decades, maternity studies have found a more prominent place in academia and, as a result, issues related to maternal practices that were previously overlooked are critically addressed, leading to a more inclusive and diverse reconceptualisation of the notion of ‘motherhood’. However, intersectional though this new configuration may be, it still tends to exclude non-normative mothers oppressed by factors such as race, ethnicity, and/or class, an attitude which is recurrently built on the dichotomy ‘good/bad mother.’ This has had particularly oppressive effects on mothers of Afro- Caribbean backgrounds, insofar as those who have experienced a disconnection from their own motherline have been forced to engage in maternity practices often regarded by white, privileged communities as ‘monstrous.’ In this paper, such notions will be brought to bear on the novel Halsey Street (2018) by Dominican-American writer Naima Coster and Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) by Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat.