Tales of Mothers: Eight Captivating Stories and Celebration of Motherhood (original) (raw)

Stories of Mothering in Selected Muslim Female Narratives

International Journal of Advanced Research in Islamic and Humanities, 2022

Stories written by women writers hold an instrumental position in literature as they highlight the female perspectives and worldview, spatially and temporally. In Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi and A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam, the female personal narratives include important details concerning the history of Oman and Bangladesh in the 1970s, respectively. This comparative study seeks to reveal images of motherhood in both novels and uncover the nature of the representation of mothers in Omani and Bangladeshi societies. The methodology adopts intersectionality as a lens to examine the images of mothering within the two socio-cultural contexts. The two novels revealed images of motherhood that are layered with complexities and tied to the culture they belong to. The narratives are also monumental as they reveal multifaceted themes of motherhood that lead to profound implications in the lives of the next generation.

Motherhood in Christianity and Islam (2010)

Common experiences of mothering offer profound critiques of maternal ethical norms found in both Christianity and Islam. The familiar responsibilities of caring for children, assumed by the majority of Christian and Muslim women, provide the basis for reassessing sacrificial and selfless love, protesting unjust religious and political systems, and dismantling romanticized notions of childcare. As a distinctive category of women's experience, motherhood may offer valuable perspectives necessary for remedying injustices that afflict mothers and children in particular, as well as for developing cross-cultural understandings of justice in general. BECAUSE IT is common to the lives of so many women, both Christian and Muslim, motherhood is an ideal subject for comparative religious ethics. Do Christian and Muslim sources, however, offer different views of motherhood? Put differently, might Christian and Muslim women mother differently as a result of their religious beliefs? In foundational religious sources such as the Bible, papal documents, the Qur'an, and hadith, commentaries concerning motherhood differ only slightly and usually in emphasis upon one particular aspect of mothering versus another. These differences, moreover, pale in comparison to the responsibilities familiar to mothers everywhere: years dedicated to the daily work of feeding, clothing, cleaning, holding, educating, and myriad other activities necessary for the survival and flourishing of the next generation. Indeed, both Christian and Muslim texts that address mothers offer little prescriptive ethical guidance for them; in these traditions one finds that mothers tend to be objectified as symbols of willing and selfless devotion. The actual experiences of mothers, however, challenge assumed ethical norms of maternal selfless love, re-evaluate the role of mothers in establishing just societies, and correct romanticized views of childcare. The first part of this essay examines how maternal experi-JRE 38.4:638–653.

BOOK REVIEW: Conversations of Motherhood: Women's Writing Across Traditions

Africanus, 2015

The devaluation of social reproductive labour has taken on unique and insidious forms through the functioning of the 'post'-apartheid political economy of South Africa. In particular, the non-racial and neoliberal ideology of the 'Rainbow Nation' and its various guises of 'freedom' render the forms and mechanisms of racialised and gendered oppression in South Africa increasingly more difficult to make sense of. In considering the reproduction of socially constructed materiality and experience in this country, the history of racial capitalism, and the enduring racialisation of inequality should be taken into account. It is against this context and backdrop that the centralisation of gendered experiences and representations of transcultural motherhoods by Ksenia Robbe in Conversations of motherhood: women's writing across traditions is particularly important to examine. The central thrust of the book is one concerned with representations and experiences of motherhood. What is particularly interesting, is that the book explores the ways in which women understand, write, and speak about motherhood from specific positions, rather than as a homogenous symbolic representation or ideal. From these positions, motherhood

Indian Muslim Mothers and their Maternal Subjectivity

2020

ABSTRACT: Maternal subjectivity is defined in terms of emerging agency of a mother as a woman within the interface with her child. It entails engagement with the experience of motherhood and womanhood to define a sense of self. In psychoanalysis, this ground of interaction with the mother is seen as a key influencer to the evolution of one's identity much before the phase of oedipal complex. For many years, the mother-child relationship was understood from the child's perspective but in recent times, due recognition has been given to the Mother as a subject as well. This paper is an attempt to capture her voice to address her dilemmas and efforts to negotiate with the fragmented self within her to contribute to her emerging agency. Existing work around maternal subjectivity has a predominantly western lens, theoretical underpinnings have been taken from the work of Jessica Benjamin and Alison Stone, but the effort was to capture the voices of Middle class Muslim mothers of a...

Angels or Demons: A Comparative Analysis of Motherhood Concept in World Literature

Akademik Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi

From the beginning of the history of humanity, motherhood has been considered as the most sacred and constant attribute in many cultures. During periods, although women's roles and responsibilities have changed due to the social, politic and economic events, the main responsibility of a woman has always been accepted as ''motherhood''. With the modern era, as women participated in social spheres, mothering has been shaped in terms of expectations and prejudices. Motherhood has evolved through ages, yet, the expected notions of mothers mirror and recall similar attributes in almost all cultures: patience, self-sacrifice, compassion, charity and unconditional love towards children. There are various conducted studies based on the concept of ''motherhood'' in psychology, anthropology and literature. However, for this study, in order to exemplify the concept of ''motherhood'' defined by Adrienne Rich in her work Of Woman Born (1976), certain mother figures from the literary texts of world literature were chosen and comparatively analyzed. The aim of this study was not to generalize the concept of "motherhood" for every culture in world literature, yet, based on the findings of the analysis, it was observed that the perception of ''motherhood'' has been reflected in similar ways in many literary works of different cultures. Therefore, this study is exemplarily for further comparative literary studies based on motherhood and mothering in world literatures.

The Image of Modern Islamic Women through Childbirth in Malay and Persian Short Stories

TEST Engineering & Management, 2020

This paper analyzes Malay and Persian short stories by Zaharah Nawawi and Simin Daneshvar entitled, Perjalanan yang Panjang (A Long Journey) and Zāymān (Childbirth) where they use the same issue, childbirth, to bring together the strands of their presentation of the modern Islamic women. Thus the objective of this study is to examine in detail the image of modern Islamic women through childbirth in Malay and Persian short stories. The study applies contextual analysis under the themes of women as educated persons and responsibility bearers, reliance on authority and human nature, tradition versus modernity, view of love and symbolism of journey and purification. This paper contributes towards reducing the huge gap of comparative studies between Malay and Persian literature especially short stories by female writers. Despite various differences, Zaharah and Daneshvar both succeeded in using one of the core experiences of womanhood to present strong and inspiring Malay and Persian females as role models.

Narratives of Muslim Womanhood and Women’s Agency*

Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 2016

*This is an introductory essay for ICMR Volume 27.3, a special issue entitled Narratives of Muslim Womanhood and Women's Agency, and then guest edited by Minako Sakai and Samina Yasmeen. Due to technical issues this essay was not included in that issue. Readers are encouraged to read this essay in conjunction with the special issue to gain an overview.