![]() I’ve been watching up close and personally as too many women who are dear to me have struggled these past two-plus years, attempting to juggle child care, Zoom school, work responsibilities, and a semblance of sanity. So a few months ago, when I received a copy of Angela Garbes’ second book, Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, despite not being a mother myself, I picked it up with great interest. ![]() This pandemic has laid bare the fact that mothers in America-and particularly low-income mothers of color-are in crisis. For this reason, though I myself don’t have children, I’ve always seen mothering as a collective concern. My mother was absent, but in her place a dozen other mothers stepped in. And in the summer, I was put on a plane to California, and my caretaking was done by my paternal grandmother and her sister. ![]() On Sundays, we got in the car and drove across Brooklyn to spend the day surrounded by all of my grandfather’s sisters and their children. ![]() ![]() I was raised by my maternal grandparents in a three-family house also inhabited by my grandmother’s sisters, with more sisters just a stone’s throw away. Growing up, my parents were nomads, traversing the country and the globe, fighting for the rights of working-class people. ![]()
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