Conceiving of and representing mothers without their children seems so paradoxical as to be almost impossible. How can we define a mother in the absence of her child? This compelling volume explores these and other questions from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, examining experiences, representations, creative manifestations, and embodiments of mothers without their children. In her 1997 book, entitled Mother Without Child: Contemporary Fiction and the Crisis of Motherhood, the critic Elaine Tuttle Hansen urged for critical and feminist engagement with what she described as ‘the borders of motherhood and the women who really live there, neither fully inside nor fully outside some recognizable “family unit”, and often exiles from their children’. This book extends and expands this important enquiry, looking at maternal experience and mothering on the borders of motherhood in different historical and cultural contexts, thereby opening up the way in which we imagine and represent mothers without their children to reassessment and revision, and encouraging further dialogue about what it might mean to mother on the borders of motherhood.

Charlotte Beyer is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. She has published widely on crime fiction and contemporary literature. She is the editor of Teaching Crime Fiction (Palgrave, 2018), and Co-Editor of Mothers Without Their Children (Demeter Press, 2019) Janet MacLennan, born on an island in the Atlantic, has made her way to an island of quite different climes–from Canada to the Caribbean to make her home as a professor of communication, narrative researcher, and Travellin’ Mama to a travellin’ boy. Dorsía Smith Silva is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras in the Faculty of General Studies. She is the co-editor of Caribbean without Borders: Caribbean Literature, Language, and Culture (2008), among others. In addition, her poetry has appeared in Adanna, POUI, and Nourish. Marjorie Tesser is the author of two poetry chapbooks THE IMPORTANT THING IS (Firewheel Award Winner) and The Magic Feather. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in Drunken Boat, Akashic Press’ Thursdaze, Earth’s Daughter, The Saturday Evening Post, and others. She is the editor in chief of Mom Egg Review.

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Andrea Robertson, RM, MHSc: I have been a Registered Midwife in Ontario, Canada since 2003 and member of faculty in the Midwifery Education Program at Ryerson University since 2010. My path to midwifery includes frontline work in shelters and services for women experiencing past or current violence, housing instability, and mental health issues. Along with close colleagues, I am committed to improving access to midwifery for populations who typically experience marginalization. I am grateful for the unrelenting support of my partner and children, and to each person who has included me in their pregnancy and birth experiences.

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