Birthing Black Mothers

“Viewing Black motherhood as a trending political site, Jennifer C. Nash boldly pushes Black feminists to reflect critically on their own embrace of crisis rhetoric that casts Black maternal bodies as mere symbols of state violence marked by suffering, trauma, and grief. While powerfully arguing we risk reproducing Black mothers as problems in need of intervention and relying on low-wage Black birthworkers to save them, Nash points to ways we can theorize new forms of Black maternal freedom that refuse confinement to a marketed crisis frame.” - Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

“Investigating the fraught position in which Black mothers find themselves and the complex ways they engage with the discourse of crisis that is attached to them, Birthing Black Mothers will generate a wonderfully complex debate in Black feminism. The difficult conversations that Jennifer C. Nash’s arguments will incite are well worth the discomfort. This brilliant book is the most exciting piece of scholarship I have read this year.” - Khiara M. Bridges, author of The Poverty of Privacy Rights

"[An] essential examination of Black motherhood and its layered complexities of representation, performance, gaze, critique, precarity and politics." - Karla Strand, Ms.

"Birthing Black Mothers is a highly relevant and accessible work that will appeal to students interested in various aspects of Black motherhood, as well as to a broader audience outside academia. Jennifer Nash's depiction of the contemporary crisis enriches ongoing debates around Black motherhood." - Etyelle Pinheiro de Araujo, E3W Review of Books

"Birthing Black Mothers is an insightful and important analysis of black motherhood in the contemporary moment. . . . Nash’s most significant contribution lies in the questions she asks of black feminists; what happens when 'Black feminist innovations' are absorbed by the very institutions they are meant to challenge? What are the consequences of getting a rickety seat at an intrinsically unjust table?" - Patricia Hamilton, Ethnic and Racial Studies

"Birthing Black Mothers exemplifies critical generosity as methodological practice in her complex analyses of Black feminists’ relationship to power. Her point is not to romanticize Black feminism as anti-institutional and fugitive, nor denigrate it as hypocritical and ineffective. Rather, her point is to explore how Black feminists exist within the system through a series of negotiations that are never neat nor coherent." - Rhaisa Williams, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

"Birthing Black Mothers is lyrically and passionately written. It is an outpouring of the author’s conviction that Black American cis motherhood – for all that it might be tied to grief – is also creatively invested in new imaginings of itself. I applaud this book for establishing the Black maternal as generative of creative acts of refusal – actions that make more liveable Black (American) lives and futurisms possible." - Nicole Miriam Daniels, Feminism & Psychology

"Birthing Black Women is essential reading for those interested in reproductive justice, Black feminism, public health, and media studies."

"The contemporary content and ingenious writing style of the author create numerous points to engage students in various subjects ranging from reproductive rights to social class, thus making it perfect for both undergraduate and graduate students. The book would easily lend itself to a women’s and gender studies or sociology program, but facilitators would be remiss to ignore the social movement underpinnings, making it ideal for political science or criminal justice courses with an emphasis on inequality, social justice, and race." - Shauntey James, Gender & Society