Mamas work in different ways to take care of their babies, but everything they do is out of love.
Illustrating the myriad ways that mothers provide for their children—piloting airplanes, washing floors, or dancing at a strip club—this picture book is the first to depict a sex-worker parent. Introducing the idea of bodily labor, it provides an expanded notion of working mothers and challenges the idea that only some jobs result in good parenting. Instead, we're reminded that, while every mama's work looks different, every mama works to make their baby's world better.
About the panelists:
Juniper Fitzgerald is a mother, former sex worker, and PhD based in Omaha, Nebraska. For more than a decade, Juniper worked as a sex worker in various contexts and she continues to work as sex workers' rights advocate.
Akynos is a New York-raised stripper and performance artist. Her film Whore Logic has been featured in film festivals such as The Sex Worker Film and Arts festival. She is a grad student at Goddard College in Vermont and the founder of the grassroots community project The Black Sex Worker Collective.
Shy Blunt is a Black single queer intersectional feminist mama. She works as a youth development coordinator for Girls Educational & Mentoring Services supporting and empowering survivors of Commercial Sexual Trafficking & Exploitation. She is also a proud sex worker who’s raising a free-thinking conscious and magical little being along the way.
Kymberly Cutter is an out sex worker, writer, parent, herbalist, witch, and human rights activist. She has 4 children and resides in the Sonoran desert in a queer, co parenting community.
Johanna Robin Hand is an artist, illustrator, and college student. She grew up with a very out sex worker mother and spent her teenage years living collectively with sex worker co-parents.
PJ Starr is a member of the Red Umbrella Babies editorial collective and is a parent, filmmaker, photographer, writer, researcher, and advocate for the rights of sex workers, immigrants, and people living with mental health concerns. PJ is the director of the award-nominated feature film NO HUMAN INVOLVED, about Marcia Powell, a mother who was incarcerated for prostitution for more than two years.
Syd is a longtime community educator and practicing psychotherapist interested in sexuality, gender, and intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality. Born and raised in New York City, she has worked with young people, children, and families in nonprofit, higher education, public health, and NYC Department of Education Schools for the past fifteen years.
“This is the mothering book I’ve always dreamed of! How Mamas Love shifts our narrow definition of what a mother is, what a mother does, what a mother looks like, and what caring for our babies looks like.”
Juniper Fitzgerald and Elise Peterson
Mamas work in different ways to take care of their babies, but everything they do is out of love.
Also available from Feminist Press:
Edited by Ethel Johnston Phelps
Feminist Folktales from Around the World: Volume IV