Collective Mothering as Radical Imagings for Black and Brown Children

• In Event: Black Mamas Teach: Leaning on, Learning From, and Centering Black M(other)work as Educational Praxis

Abstract

Black, Indigenous and Brown mamascholars are caretaking Black and Brown children within the confines and contexts of race, sex, and class in academia and society. Mothers have perservered in spite of white supremacist values, laws, and policies that limit the fullness of our children’s lives. The commitment to raising free Black and Brown children is a subversive act against the status quo and is a promise to our childrens’ dignity and worth.

Mamascholaring is a verb. It is a commitment to the transformation of our world towards liberation for ourselves and our children (Reyes McGovern, & Cariaga, 2020). Mamascholars as radical mothers, are raising Black and Brown children while navigating academia. The work of mamascholars includes the intentional weaving of roles as caregiver, teacher, academic, and activist with the hope of bringing freedom to fruition. Radical mothering simply means mothering by “grasping things at the root” (Davis, 2006). Black, Indigenous and Brown mamascholars extend the radical tradition of m(other)work that invites collective spaces of mothering to reimagine, heal and thrive as the collective work of parenting for liberation (Collins 1990; Greene Brown, 2020; Tintiangco-Cubales, 2020). This paper illuminates the multifaceted identities mamas embrace and transcend. Becoming a mamascholar by actively taking up the expansiveness of such an identity, pushes conceptions of parenting in academia (Caballero et al., 2019; Fuentes 2013).

This paper then adds to the expanding field of motherscholarship by naming ways mothering impacts scholarship, scholarship impacts mothering and finally, how both scholarship and mothering can be rooted in liberation. This paper presents data from an ethnographic case study of collective spaces created for and by 12 participants who held the identities of mamascholars and/or radical mother. As a praxis-based framework, I employed my following tenets: (1) Mourn and Re-Member, (2) Audacious Love, (3) Determination (self and collective), (4) Restful Dreaming, and (5) Emancipation (MADRE) (Author 4, 2019). MADRE allows for a deep understanding of what radical mothering looks like and what mamascholars are doing to impact and change the field from various margins. Findings from this qualitative study demonstrate how these my participants collectively cultivated a critical, humanizing, and healing space; and (b) emphasize the need for collective care to raise Black and Brown children with dignity. The results from this study have implications for interventions aimed at improving the wellbeing of Black and Brown children towards thriving in schools and the world at large (Love, 2019; Camangian, 2015).

This applied research is necessary because it not only expands what collective mothering means in scholarship, it births radical imaginings of justice for our children. This work is urgent and necessary, given that schools have functioned as hegemonic and transactional spaces of dehumanization particularly for children of color (Freire, 1970). Outcomes of collective mamascholaring include the expansion of schools to support Black and Brown mothers and children while constructing new ways of knowing so that our learning continues on the foundation of radical love, personal and collective agency, critical hope, and self-determination (Author 4, 2019).

Author

• Victoria Duran, ESUHSD