Mother

No role for women is as enshrined as that of the mother. The mother is the holder of creative power, the literal power to create life, and representative of the physical power to create, ‘who nourishes and sustains Life from the abundance of Her own Body's flesh and fluids’ (Wilshire, 1994, p. 21). Tamaryn Dalldorf, Sylvia Tloti, and Soonbae Kim write of women's creative voices, their relationships with their creations, their children and their characters, and the blurring of those borders.

No role for women is as punishable as that of the mother. No failure carries such heavy repercussions, culturally and legally, as failure to be a (good) mother. Even in the spheres of the world where women's success in careers, creative pursuits and non-familial relationships is most accepted, the expectation that women will eventually become mothers reigns supreme. With it comes the expectation of self-abnegation – infinite, unrestrained self-denial, self-destruction and extreme and culturally sanctioned punishment when that destruction turns outward instead of inward. Elif Çakmak, Lorraine Rumson, and Sam George-Allen attend to women who refuse or reject the role of motherhood.