Maternal Autobiography as a Site of Feminist Negotiation and Resistance

Abstract

How can I use my writing to tackle my conflicting experiences as a writer, a mother, a feminist activist in Israeli academia? How can words combine the routine exhausting work and pleasures of motherhood; my struggles against injustice done to the Arab minority in my country, torn by unrelenting conflict; and the need to turn my back on all these obligations and efforts to write? As the normative expectation of mothers is to identify with the maternal role, activism which involves resistance and thus social and political hazards may be considered a threat to maternal work. But whereas one could argue that activism is, in fact, a social and communal extension of motherhood, writing is over and over again perceived as a neglect of maternal duties. In this article, I introduce feminist autobiography as a literary form which has enabled me as mother-writer-activist to create a space where social, cultural, political, and psychological conflicts and contradictions can intermingle, creating an alternative maternal subjectivity and voice.