Reflections by Beti Ellerson
Image: Mossane and her mother
Mossane by Safi Faye
On
the timeline of women's lives are the myriad stories of the hope of
childbirth, the fear of it not happening, societal expectations of
motherhood, the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, memories
of mothers, stories of aging and caregiving. Of these experiences,
African women in cinema weave stories of mothers--many of them, their
own.
"[Women and motherwork are]…in the center of what are typically seen as disjunctures, the places between human and nature, between private and public, between oppression and liberation." Hence, Patricia Hill Collins's term "motherwork" blurs the dichotomies in theorizations of motherhood and mothering that make distinctions between "private and public, family and work, the individual and the collective, identity as individual autonomy and identity growing from the collective self-determination of one’s group…." Furthermore, she locates the practice of "mothering the mind" in the myriad relationships between community othermothers. (Patricia Hill Collins, Shifting the Center: Race Class and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood)
Similarly, as a theoretical framework, Catherine Obianuju Acholonu's notion of motherism involves the "dynamics of ordering, reordering, creating structures, building and rebuilding in cooperation with mother nature at all levels of human endeavor." Closely related to the concept of motherism is Wanuri Kahiu's idea of mothering nature: “my metaphor about Pumzi (2009) is life and sacrifice and that we ourselves have to mother mother nature. That we have to make sacrifices in order to live in this world. And that we have to know that our own behaviour will affect generations to come.” (Wanuri Kahiu, TEDx Forum On Afrofuturism In Popular Culture)
See links to of stories of mothers and practices of motherwork:
African Women in Cinema: Stories of Mothers
African women, screen culture and practices of Motherwork
