In the Aftermath of Youth Gun Violence: Othermothers, Othersons, and Evolving Kinship in Grief

• In Event: 21061 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: Rethinking Safety, Violence, and Embodiment

Abstract

When a young person is violently killed, they leave behind a community in mourning, including both family and friends. This paper explores the unlikely relationships that emerge after a death between Black mothers and their deceased sons’ peers, illuminating how gun deaths of young men can ignite new extended kinship ties beyond the biological nuclear family. Drawing on ethnographic data from two distinct studies spanning the country geographically and nearly a decade in time, we identify the ways that Black mothers take on unique kinds of mothering roles with the friends of their murdered sons and may experience emotional relief in sharing the grieving labor with their othersons. The emergence of othermother/otherson relationships in this context suggests one of the ways that bereaved mothers resist the isolation and stigma that often follows gun deaths. At a time when social ties and networks are changing, this paper reveals the unexpected small but significant ways that people perform and communicate care for each other in the most challenging of times.

Authors

• Nora Gross, Barnard College

• Ina Marie Therese Kelleher, Contra Costa College