On today’s panel at CSUDH, Trina Greene Brown reads a passage from her chapter in the Chicana Motherwork Anthology. Swipe left to watch… read below for full section:
“Through personal storytelling of my experiences birthing and caregiving while simultaneously working in the women’s rights movement, this piece will reflect on the inequities and hypocrisies of the feminist movement in the United States and motherhood.
My experiences led to the conception of Parenting for Liberation, which was originally conceived with the idea that Black mothers, like myself, were suffering a critical lack of support and suffering in silence. Audre Lorde reflected, “My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.”
These words reflected my experiences and the Black mothers and women in my life. I took Lorde’s statements to heart and used them to guide me to these writings. This is not meant as a recrimination of white women and mothers, but rather a challenge to #WhiteFeminism to seek the intersections that bind us and connect deeper and support Mothers of Color. When the day-to-day work of a feminist is to ensure that women’s voices are heard, this Black feminist mama’s personal experiences of being silenced and denied access to privileges, emboldens me to raise the question harkening upon the ancestral spirit of Sojourner Truth, “Aint I a Mama?”
From “Ain’t I a Mama” in Chicana Motherwork by Trina Greene Brown
