Over the past fifty years, feminist literary criticism has become theoretical rather than practical, severing any relationship between literary analysis and the real lived experiences of women. An example of this disconnect is the way in which the madwoman in feminist literature has become a lauded icon of liberation, when in reality her situation would be seen as anything but empowered. Finding the Plot takes this example to task, arguing that in fact any interpretation of women’s madness as subversive reinforces the very gender stereotypes that feminist literary criticism should be calling into question.

Conceiving of and representing mothers without their children seems so paradoxical as to be almost impossible. How can we define a mother in the absence of her child? This compelling volume explores these and other questions from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, examining experiences, representations, creative manifestations, and embodiments of mothers without their children. In her 1997 book, entitled Mother Without Child: Contemporary Fiction and the Crisis of Motherhood, the critic Elaine Tuttle Hansen urged for critical and feminist engagement with what she described as ‘the borders of motherhood and the women who really live there, neither fully inside nor fully outside some recognizable “family unit”, and often exiles from their children’. This book extends and expands this important enquiry, looking at maternal experience and mothering on the borders of motherhood in different historical and cultural contexts, thereby opening up the way in which we imagine and represent mothers without their children to reassessment and revision, and encouraging further dialogue about what it might mean to mother on the borders of motherhood.

Theory on mothers, mothering and motherhood has emerged as a distinct body of knowledge within Motherhood Studies and Feminist Theory more generally. This collection, The Second Edition of Maternal Theory: Essential Readings introduces readers to this rich and diverse tradition of maternal theory. Composed of 60 chapters the 2nd edition includes two sections: the first with the classic texts by Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Sara Ruddick, Alice Walker, Barbara Katz Rothman, bell hooks, Sharon Hays, Patricia Hill-Collins, Audre Lorde, Daphne de Marneffe, Judith Warner, Patrice diQinizio, Susan Maushart, and many more. The second section includes thirty new chapters on vital and new topics including Trans Parenting, Non-Binary Parenting, Queer Mothering, Matricentric Feminism, Normative Motherhood, Maternal Subjectivity, Maternal Narratology, Maternal Ambivalence, Maternal Regret, Monstrous Mothers, The Migrant Maternal, Reproductive Justice, Feminist Mothering, Feminist Fathering, Indigenous Mothering, The Digital Maternal, The Opt-Out Revolution, Black Motherhoods, Motherlines, The Motherhood Memoir, Pandemic Mothering, and many more. Maternal Theory is essential reading for anyone interested in motherhood as experience, ideology, and identity.

Motherhood is one of those roles that assumes an almost-outsized cultural importance in the significance we force it to bear. It becomes both the source of and the repository for all kinds of cultural fears. Its ubiquity perhaps makes it this perfect foil. After all, while not everyone will become a mother, everyone has a mother. When we force motherhood to bear the terrors of what it means to be human, we inflict trauma upon those who mother. A long tradition of bad mothers thus shapes contemporary mothering practices (and the way we view them), including the murderous Medea of Greek mythology, the power-hungry Queen Gertrude of Hamlet, and the emasculating mother of Freud's theories. Certainly, there are mother who cause harm, inflict abuse, act monstrously. Mothers are human. But mothers are also a favourite and easy scapegoat. The contributors to this collection explore a multitude of interdisciplinary representations of mothers that, through their very depictions of bad mothering, challenge the tropes of monstrous mothering that we lean on, revealing in the process why we turn to them. Chapters in Monstrous Mothers: Troubling Tropes explore literary, cinematic, and real-life monstrous mothers, seeking to uncover social sources and results of these monstrosities.

This book explores the interrelationship between the option and experience of motherhood and the experience of mental breakdown as vividly communicated by 20th-century women writers. The focus is on three writers--Sylvia Plath, Marie Cardinal, and Margaret Atwood--but others are included, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Anne Sexton, Virginia Woolf, and Emma Santos. Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness calls attention to the ways in which maternity and motherhood represent common forms of apprehension for all women, reactivating the fear of death that has been discovered and repressed in childhood, and, in some instances, contributing directly to mental breakdown. It offers evidence of the particular stresses encountered by highly gifted women who try to negotiate their way between creation and procreation and "write their way out" of madness.

Absorbing, lyrical, vivid and compulsively readable - The Heart is a Star is beautiful storytelling from a talented new writer. A novel for fans of Holly Ringland, Jacqueline Maley, Hannah Richell. Layla Byrnes is exhausted. She's juggling a demanding job as an anaesthetist, a disintegrating marriage, her young kids, and a needy lover. And most particularly she's managing her histrionically unstable mother, who repeatedly threatens to kill herself. But this year, it's different. When her mother rings just before Christmas, she doesn't follow the usual script. Instead, she tells Layla that there's something she needs to tell her about her much-loved father. In response, Layla drops everything to rush to her childhood home on the wild west coast of Tasmania. She's determined to finally confront her mother - and find out what really happened to her father - and lay some demons to rest. The Heart is a Star is an engrossing, lyrical and powerfully absorbing novel about the complicated and beautiful messiness of midlife; about the ways in which we navigate an intricate, complicated world; and about how we can uncover our true selves when we are forced to face the myths that make us. 'Tense, heartbreaking and crackling with vivid honesty - all those tiny, telling details that have you nodding with recognition and wanting to gulp the book in one rush of a sitting. I could not put this book down. A new star is born in the writing firmament.' Nikki Gemmell 'Captivating ... The Heart is a Star is a powerful novel with evocative and enticing language that will appeal to readers of Richard Flanagan and Holly Ringland. Rooted in feminine empowerment, Rogers' debut is necessary and enthralling reading, and will stay with the reader long after the last page.' Books+Publishing 'Powerful, lyrical ... I was enthralled by its physical and emotional landscapes and compelled by its dark mysteries.' Lee Kofman, The Writer Laid Bare 'The Heart is a Star is a novel that will transport you.' Christine Balint, Water Music 'A novel to treasure. Fragile, tender, honest, raw - and luminescent with hope.' Mimi Kwa, House of Kwa 'Impressive ... a compelling story told with sensitivity and intelligence' Lyn Yeowart, The Silent Listener 'An unflinching, beautiful interrogation of modern womanhood, brimming with yearning and lyricism' Victoria Brookman, Burnt Out 'Soul-wrenching and heart-mending in equal measure' Ailsa Wild, The Care Factor