This special session explores the portrayal of motherhood in contemporary Spanish-language fiction, non-fiction and art. Recent works such as Mamá desobediente (2019) by Esther Vivas, Contra los hijos (2018) by Lina Meruane, and ¿Dónde está mi tribu? (2013) by Carolina del Olmo interrogate the way that women experience, write about and challenge motherhood. While motherhood and womanhood tend to be equated in Spanish-speaking cultures, recent works by women challenge this assumption or view motherhood from an activist feminist perspective. This panel analyzes how recent works portray how motherhood is made visible and / or invisible in Spanish-speaking countries.

This session includes four speakers, ranging in academic rank from Assistant to Associate to Professor, whose geographic area spans the US, with one presenter originally from Spain. The presentations cover a diversity of topics about motherhood, from obstetrical violence, to forced motherhood, to civil disobedience to abortion across the Spanish-speaking world. Each person will contribute a 12 minute talk to allow for 15 minutes of discussion following the presentations.

First, Dr. Beltrán de Heredia offers an analysis of the photographic project 'Vulnerables' by feminist visual artist Silvia Marte. The artist conducted a series of interviews with mothers whose ages range from youth to old age, and the photographic project exposes the most vulnerable side of bodies. Marte’s project makes visible and denounces the obstetric violence of a group of mothers who, by making visible the effects of abuse on their body, bear witness to a collective that has lacked voice, space and justice. Her presentation examines 'Vulnerables' as a symbolic and real territory of this violence from perspectives that intertwine visual studies, pathography, affect and trauma theory, and embodied politics. Her presentation aims to analyze the woman’s body as a reflection of the testimony of violence and trauma, a silenced and largely invisible history.

Our second presenter, Dr. Jerónimo, focuses on queer women in Equatorial Guinea, already members of a marginalized group, whose motherhood further complicates the intersection of invisibilities within their identities. In Yo no quería ser madre (2019), Trifonia Melibea Obono gives voice to thirty Equatorial Guinean queer women through interviews in which they discuss their experiences of being forced into motherhood through rape, familial pressure, or lack of survival alternatives. Interviewees discuss the difficulties of queer motherhood, touching on a wide range of topics and attitudes toward motherhood. Yo no quería ser madre reveals a multifaceted representation of queer motherhood in Equatorial Guinea, both elucidating the ways in which motherhood is a challenge and burden for women, as well as explaining how motherhood can be used as a survival tactic for queer mothers by making their lesbian identity invisible in an attempt to shield themselves from homophobia.

Third, Dr. Barnes examines Karina Sainz Borgo’s first novel, La hija de la española, which chronicles the protests and ensuing violent repression that plunged Venezuela into chaos surrounding Nicolás Maduro’s rise to power following the death of Hugo Chávez. While traditionally in the West, motherhood connotes a lack of civil status, a societal invisibility, which has justified the exclusion of women from the public civil sphere, in La hija de la española, mothers are associated with a peaceful, prosperous, and civil Venezuela of the first half of the twentieth century. This Venezuela welcomed immigrants and single mothers who helped build a prosperous middle class. And yet, these mothers remain invisible both to greater society and to the novel. The death of the protagonist’s mother coincides with the death of civil society and, through association, seemingly initiates the loss of civilization.

Finally, Dr. Ross takes up a silenced topic of abortion in Marta Barrio’s 2021 novel Leña menuda. The novel narrates the story of the protagonist’s pregnancy, her discovery of a fetal abnormality at seven months, and her subsequent decision to abort. This paper will explore the motif of abortion in the novel, considering the concept of (limited) abortion as a reproductive right in Spain. Julia Hanigsberg, in her article “Homologizing Pregnancy and Motherhood: A Consideration of Abortion”, posits abortion as what she terms a ‘mothering decision’: “abortion, and indeed all procreative decision making, is about mothering in its broadest terms [. . .]. Even when a woman decides to have an abortion, she is still making a mothering decision” (373). While pregnancy can be hidden at times, and abortions are invisible (not discussed, not seen), the narrator of this story discusses her mothering decision to access an abortion past the 14 week time period in which an abortion is allowable in Spain.