Vexing motherhoods in Ireland and abroad in Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s Mother America

Abstract

This article explores the difficulties of representing motherhood from a contemporary – and, allegedly, feminist – perspective in the collection of short stories Mother America (2012) by Irish author Nuala Ní Chonchúir. The stories in the volume include a whole typology of mothers: surrogate mothers, exiled mothers, mothers who see their child abducted and others who tattoo them for protection, all of whom need to deal with particular crises which usually change them in profound ways. Although the writer proves very brave in challenging and revising some of the myths and dominant discourses about motherhood in earlier historical periods, she also sometimes resorts to a number of clichés concerning mothers and children that may somehow endanger their qualification as conventional feminist texts. Like some of the literature on the subject, Ní Chonchúir seems rather hesitant and ambivalent about whether motherhood should be primarily conceived as a social construct – or institution – or rather as something natural and innate to the female condition. In any case, Mother America offers penetrating insights into the dilemmas that frequently accompany motherhood and very rarely passes moral judgments on the (rather habitual) failures and the (much less common) triumphs of the characters.