Feminist theory on motherhood has successfully transformed mothers into subjects of their own
discourse recognized the historical heterogeneous and socially constructed origins of their
life experience while at the same time widening our understanding of the notion of mothering.
This collection combines a literary and a wider cultural perspective from which to look at the
topic of the representation of other or forgotten motherhoods. Mothers who have been forced to
live exiled and away from their children women who after trying to conceive get pregnant but
discover they cannot bear to become mothers or even literary characters based on an
autobiographical experience of a sexually abusive mother. The essays critically point out how
writing becomes a tool to think and write about the many aspects of motherhood such as an
idealized maternal experience versus the real one or the accepted stereotypes of the good
mother and the bad mother.
