Horrible Mothers

LoÏc Bourdeau is an assistant professor of French and francophone studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He holds the College of Liberal Arts/Louisiana Board of Regents Professorship in Francophone Studies. He is the associate editor of Études Francophones.

"This timely volume invigorates scholarly attention to the role of the mother in culture and advocates for a reading of motherhood and maternity imbued with empowering potential for all women whose value is measured according to social expectations of mothers."-Jocelyn A. Frelier, French Studies "This collection will be of interest to those studying mothers and motherhood in literature of any language as well as scholars of Francophone North America."-D. L. Boudreau, Choice “This multidisciplinary collection of essays from a francophone North American context constitutes an important challenge to normalizing and oppressive discourses of motherhood that fail to take account of the much messier and often ambivalent nature of lived maternal experiences. . . . We are reminded in this collection of the dangers of the cultural idealization of mothers and the ongoing need to deconstruct normative motherhood from a feminist perspective.”-Julie Rodgers, lecturer in French studies and member of the Motherhood Project, Maynooth University (Ireland)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Failing SuccessfullyLoÏc Bourdeau1. The Whore and Her Mother: Exploring Matrophobia in Nelly Arcan’s PutainPauline Henry-Tierney2. Horrible Mothers in MÉmÈre’s Kitchen: Queer Identity in New England Franco-AmericaSusan Pinette3. “I’m Not the Virgin Mary”: Rebellious Motherhood in GrÉgoire Chabot’s “A Life Lost”Chelsea Ray4. Permissive Parenting: The Awful American Mother in Nancy Huston’s Lignes de failleAlison Rice5. Lucie Joubert’s Ironic Rejection of Motherhood in L’envers du landauNatalie Edwards6. Voicing Shame: From Fiction to Confession in the Work of Marguerite AndersenLucie Hotte and Ariane Brun del Re7. The Transgressive Mother in Nancy Huston’s Bad Girl: Classes de littÉratureSusan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx8. Forgiving the Horrible Mother: Children’s Needs and Women’s Desires in Twenty-First-Century QuÉbÉcois FilmAmy J. Ransom9. Politics and Motherhood in Xavier Dolan’s J’ai tuÉ ma mÈre and MommyLoÏc BourdeauContributorsIndex