No Country For Asian American Mothers: Reproductive Exclusion And Matritropes Of The “Yellow Mother”

• In Event: 50655 - Asian and Asian American Women

Abstract

The figure of the “yellow mother” looms over Asian American mothers as an unnamed yet pervasive racialized and gendered trope, which has been imposed upon them, and must be negotiated in their everyday practices of mothering. Theorizing the concept of “matritropes,” I map this figure through historical and persistent narratives of Asian American mothers as suspect foreigners whose reproduction has been constructed simultaneously as inferior and threatening. Based on interviews with Asian American mothers (N=104) and ethnography in homes, schools, and workplaces, I show how these mothers continue to encounter a range of matritropes, ranging from inassimilable aliens, to enemy threats, to the current dominant trope of hyper-competitive tiger mothers. Building on my previous framework of “reproductive exclusion” (Kang 2020), I show how these matritropes mobilize ideologies that justify and impose various forms of legal and social exclusion based on and directed at control of reproduction.

Author

• Miliann Kang, University of Massachusetts, Amherst