Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions

Tierra B. Tivis holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her teaching and scholarship focuses on early childhood, early childhood special education, and Black families and resilience from a Black Feminist and Critical Race perspective.

"Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions: Counternarratives of Black Family Resilience offers a new look at the lives of women stereotyped as derelict mothers living and raising children in drug-infested urban neighborhoods. Using rigorous first-hand interviews with five mothers, Dr. Tivis gives a voice to women whose complex lives fly in the face of stereotypes. In reading Barbara, Bethena, Desirea, Ladonna, and Sharonda’s stories, the reader feels as though they are there with each woman—a hallmark of good, qualitative work. These are stories of women who demonstrate agency and resilience in the face of multiple barriers. Moreover, despite the very real chaos of drug addiction, we see women who are loving mothers with high hopes and dreams for their children’s futures. Listening to women’s stories should encourage policy makers to develop strength-based solutions that can have a profound effect on women and their children. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions makes important contributions to our understanding of African American motherhood, parenting, and family life, and the larger neighborhood, social, historical, and political contexts that mothers’ lives are in. Readers will walk away with a renewed belief in the ability of women to overcome the trauma of addiction to create lives of meaning, purpose, and hope."—Robin Jarrett, Professor, Human Development and Family Studies, Department of African American Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Acknowledgments – Laurence J. Parker: Introduction – “These People Are Suffering”: Help versus Incarceration – Tools for Understanding Drug Addiction and Black Mothers’ Standpoint – Origin of the Crack Ho’: Mammies, Jezebels, Controlled Images, and Prosecution of Addiction – “From Suga to Shit”: The Drug Business and Destruction of Black Communities – More About the Mothers, Research Practice, Black Motherhood and Addiction – “I Had Help”: Kinship, Drug Addictions, and Black Family Resilience – “Wasn’ No Junkie, I Was a Workin’ Addict ... It’s a Difference”: Self-Definition of Black Mothers’ Roles and Responsibilities – Crack Baby Aftermath and Navigating Educational Institutions – “I Was Just Cryin’ Out To God”: Recovery and the Spirituality of Struggle – Discussion: What the Mothers Made Me Think About – Contributor Bio—Dr. Laurence J. Parker – Index.