Additional information
by Fiona Green (Author), Victoria Bailey (Author), Andrea O'Reilly Herrera (Author)
Revolutionizing Motherlines reflects upon and troubles current and historical understandings of Naomi Ruth Lowinsky's concept of the motherline that connects mothers to their female ancestors. Complicated histories of erasure and threads of hope are tied together with intellectually engaging and emotionally resonant dialogues about maternal lineage to illuminate previously silenced motherlines of diverse abilities, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, mothering identities, family forms, and parenting practices. The introduction of the concept of ?mothervine?, an adaptation of Lowinsky's motherline, creates a powerful image of winding vines and roots with pruned ends and overgrowths that inform how matricentric feminist scholars can deconstruct patriarchal concepts. By using innovative feminist images and language to define and express experiences of mothering, it revises the past and intervenes in ongoing debates about how to de-centre cisnormative models of lineage. Revolutionizing Motherlines creates a richness of meaning for those engaged in motherwork, and offers new insights into methodology, theory-building, and praxis of maternal scholarship.
Author Biography
Dr. Fiona Joy Green (she/her) identifies as a White straight cisgender temporarily able-bodied feminist mother who believes in the power of revolutionary feminist parenting. Her 35-year teaching career at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, included the positions of Chair, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts, and founder and first Director of the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies. She's the sole author of Practicing Feminist Mothering (ARP), co-editor of ten Demeter Press collections addressing ever-changing feminist maternal praxis and pedagogies, and author of many encyclopedia entries, peer-reviewed articles and chapters discussing feminist mothering, matricentric feminism, matroreform, motherlines, female genital cutting, gender fluidity, mommy blogging, and family engagement with privacy and boundary setting related to media and technologies. Dr. Victoria Bailey's writing ranges from creative realms to academic essays, however, her work typically explores and examines mothers, mothering, and motherhood. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and an MA in Women's Studies. Her writing has been included in a wide variety of publications including other Demeter Press anthologies. She is co-editor, along with Andrea O?Reilly and Fiona Joy Green, of Coming Into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism (Demeter Press). She is a feminist mother of three, and she lives in Alberta where she writes and sometimes teaches writing-related classes too. Dr. Andrea O?Reilly, full professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies at York University, is internationally recognized as the founder of Motherhood Studies and its subfield Maternal Theory, and creator of Matricentric Feminism, a feminism for and about mothers, and Matricritics, a literary theory and practice for a reading of mother-focused texts (2021). She is founder/editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative and publisher of Demeter Press, as well as co-editor/editor of thirty plus books on many motherhood topics, most recently in 2024 The Mother Wave: Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism and The Missing Mother and in 2025 Gone Feral: Unruly Women and the Undoing of Normative Femininity. She is co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Motherhood which will be published in a 2nd edition in 2026. She is the author of four monographs, including a collection of essays, In (M)otherwords: Writings on Mothering and Motherhood, 2009-2024 (2024) and Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice (2021). She has published 17 chapters with several more planned on mother-centred novels/memoirs that will be published in the monograph Matricritics as Literary Theory and Criticism: Reading the Maternal in Post-2010 Women's Narratives. She is twice the recipient of York University's ?Professor of the Year Award? for teaching excellence and is the 2019 recipient of the Status of Women and Equity Award of Distinction from OCUFA (Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations). She has received more than 1.5 million dollars in funding for her research projects.
