“Frontera Madre(hood)” Book Launch in Las Cruces, New Mexico

Date: Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Time: 5-7 p.m., MDT

Where: Isabel Crouch Readers Theater, New Mexico State University, 1317-1467 International Mall, Las Cruces, NM, and online via Zoom.

Editors Cynthia Bejarano and Maria Cristina Morales celebrate their new book, Frontera Madre(hood): Brown Mothers Challenging Oppression and Transborder Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Border with a panel of contributors at New Mexico State University. Panelists include Bertha Bermudez Tapia (NMSU), Paula Flores Bonilla (Cd. Juárez community activist), Paola Isabel Nava Gonzales (border artist), Taide Elena (Border Patrol Victims Network), and Marisa S. Torres (SDSU and UCSD). Other book contributors attending the event will be available for questions during the Q&A component of the presentation, and during the reception to follow.

The University bookstore will sell the book at the reception. This event is free and open to the public.

Presentations will be in English and Spanish, with simultaneous interpretation available in-person and for zoom audience members.

About the book:

The topic of mothers and mothering transcends all spaces, from popular culture to intellectual thought and critique. This collection of essays bridges both methodological and theoretical frameworks to explore forms of mothering that challenge hegemonic understandings of parenting and traditional notions of Latinx womxnhood. It articulates the collective experiences of Latinx, Black, and Indigenous mothering from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Thirty contributors discuss their lived experiences, research, or community work challenging multiple layers of oppression, including militarization of the border, border security propaganda, feminicides, drug war and colonial violence, grieving and loss of a child, challenges and forms of resistance by Indigenous mothers, working mothers in maquiladoras, queer mothering, academia and motherhood, and institutional barriers by government systems to access affordable health care and environmental justice. Also central to this collection are questions on how migration and detention restructure forms of mothering. Overall, this collection encapsulates how mothering is shaped by the geopolitics of border zones, which also transcends biological, sociological, or cultural and gendered tropes regarding ideas of motherhood, who can mother, and what mothering personifies.