Mother!

MOTHER! by Summer Stewart is a genre-defying collection of poetry and essays that interrogates what it means to be made—and remade—as a woman. Moving through girlhood, the body, labor, relationships, and motherhood, the book dismantles the idea that identity is self-determined, revealing instead how it is shaped through expectation, silence, and survival.Blending intimate narrative with sharp cultural analysis, Stewart explores pregnancy, loss, sexuality, and care as lived realities rather than abstract concepts. Her work exposes the invisible systems women sustain—within families, partnerships, and institutions—while examining the psychological and physical costs of carrying what is never fully named.At once deeply personal and structurally aware, MOTHER! reframes motherhood not as a role, but as a condition that illuminates broader truths about autonomy, power, and inheritance. In doing so, Stewart offers not resolution, but recognition and a path toward self-definition that does not rely on disappearance.