At the center of this inquiry is the figure of the “Nourishing Mother,” a conceptual framework that emerges at the intersection of scholarship on feeding work (DeVault), maternal practice (Ruddick), and matricentric feminism (O’Reilly), and conceptualizes feeding as a form of reproductive labor that is physical, mental, and emotional. Even as it remains naturalized, invisibilized, and excluded from dominant definitions of “work,” breastfeeding in particular serves as “a marker of a mother’s identity: breastfeeding reaffirms the ‘good mother’ identity for those who do it, and stigmatizes mothers who do not or who do it inappropriately” (Laura Fitzwater Gonzales 286). Feeding work emerges here as a mechanism through which the institution of motherhood is both enforced and resisted, as mothers negotiate expectations that they nourish others—often at the expense of self.
In this sense, the panel engages the presidential theme of emancipatory narratives by attending to maternal feeding practices as sites that both describe and contest the conditions of women’s lives. The texts examined here render visible the often-invisibilized labor and constraints of nourishing work while also tracing moments of resistance—whether through refusal, reconfiguration, or renegotiation of maternal roles—thereby foregrounding the agential possibilities embedded within everyday practices of care.
Stacey Amo approaches these questions in her paper, “Malnourished and Malnourishing Mothers in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban”, which traces how failures of nourishment—both physical and affective—structure mother-daughter relationships across generations. By examining the transmission of deprivation from mother to daughter, represented by disordered eating and breastmilk described as a “tasteless gray” (García 74), the paper reveals how feeding practices register the embodied effects of displacement, disconnection, and fractured belonging, positioning nourishment as a key site where national and cultural identity, as well as maternal subjectivity, are negotiated.
Diana Aramburu’s paper, “Breast Is (Not) Always Best: Rewriting the Breastfeeding Narrative in Margarita García Robayo’s ‘Leche’ and Edmaris Carazo’s ‘Hasta las tetas’”, turns to contemporary Hispanic short fiction to examine feeding “failures” within the context of societal pressures surrounding infant feeding decisions in the postpartum period. She demonstrates how narratives that challenge dominant discourses of formula as “a substandard substitute” (Bresnahan et al. 35) or depictions of cessation or refusal to breastfeed “as a form of non-compliance or deviance from normative expectations” (Teruel-Francés et al. 2). In doing so, these texts expose the regulatory force of feeding norms and rewrite the narrative scripts that define the “good mother.”
Faith Blackhurst examines breastfeeding as a site of both bodily control and resistance in her paper, “On Power and Possession: Breastfeeding and Control in Conceição Evaristo’s ‘Aramides Florença’”. Drawing on the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, her paper examines cultural mandates for females to breastfeed as asexualized mothers (Beatriz Gimeno, May Friedman) yet to submit a sexualized body to the husband. The paper analyzes how the lactating body disrupts such mandates as well as established claims to relational ownership—when Aramides’s husband becomes jealous of his suckling infant, he turns to sexual violence to repossess his wife’s body, thereby attempting to reassert patriarchial control. By foregrounding the tensions between nourishment and bodily (self-)possession, the paper reveals how feeding practices render the maternal body newly visible and contested, although vulnerable to reassertions of power.
Taken together, these three papers demonstrate that feeding is not merely a component of maternal care, but a central mechanism through which motherhood itself is defined, disciplined, and reimagined. By placing malnourishment, breastfeeding, and feeding refusal in dialogue, this panel offers a theoretically grounded intervention into studies of motherhood, embodiment, and labor, and calls for greater conceptual attention to the role of feeding in shaping maternal identities and power relations in contemporary cultural contexts.
The session will consist of three 18-minute presentations followed by at least 15 minutes of open discussion. The panel includes scholars at multiple career stages, including visiting, teaching, and senior faculty, and represents both Spanish and Portuguese as well as interdisciplinary Writing, Language, and Literature programs. This combination of disciplinary and professional perspectives strengthens the panel’s engagement across Hispanic and Lusophone contexts.