Psychologies of Mothering:

Literacy and Literature

Kristen Ferguson, Laurie Kruk

• Publisher: Demeter Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781772586046
• Subtopic: Feminist Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

As we become readers and literate beings, we enter new spaces, learning not only the decoding and encoding of words but also walking into the world of texts and literature. And as we move through time— and time, undeniably, moves through us— we co-editors continue to agree on this shared vulnerability: All human life on the planet is born of woman. The one unifying, incontrovertible experience shared by all women and men is that months-long period spent unfolding inside a woman' s body … most of us first know both love and disappointment, power and tenderness, in the person of a woman. (Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born, 1976). This 21st Century collection ranges from academic analyses in literacy and literature to personal narratives or " momoirs." They discuss mothers' psychological senses of self and experiences of the world, as seen in literacy and literature, as well as the role of mothers and the psychological impact of mothering, within these intersecting areas of expression.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Artist’s Statement
• Contents
• Introduction Stories of Mothers … Mothering through Time
• Chapter 1 Pen and Ink: A Neverending Story
• Chapter 2 “Thursday’s Child”: Navigating Identity, Literacy, and Motherhood across Cultures
• Chapter 3 Momoir Revealed: Moving from Narrative Revelation to Reformation
• Chapter 4 Motherhood and Literacy: Celebrating the Moments and Problematizing the Construction
• Chapter 5 Love of Books, Love of Children: A Mother’s Story
• Chapter 6 Mothering as the “Greatest of Arts”: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Complex Maternal Psyche in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and Herland
• Chapter 7 Challenging the Ideal of Motherhood: Unveiling Maternal Violence in Szilvia Molnar’s The Nursery
• Chapter 8 Depictions of Mothers in Award-Winning Governor General’s Illustrated Books for Young People
• Chapter 9 “Disconcerting, and Wonderful”: Second-Wave Female Friendship and Mothering in Alice Munro’s “Differently”
• Chapter 10 “It Remakes You” and “Changes One’s Existence Forever”: Reading Matrescence in Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy and Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel to Explore and Reimagine Normative Motherhood
• Conclusion
• Notes on Contributors
• Deepest appreciation to Demeter’s monthly Donors