ABSTRACT
Beginning with an analysis of Toya Graham's beating of her son during the protests against police officers’ killing of Freddie Gray, this chapter engages with the moment through a reproductive justice lens. In this way, this chapter engages with Black reproductive health scholar Dana-Ain Davis’ argument that the threat of losing one's child engenders a perpetual state of sorrow within Black caregivers. This chapter extends Davis’ research to examine the ways in which this anticipatory grief animates Black parenting, for better or worse. As the title suggests, the chapter relies heavily on Patricia Hill-Collins’ theory of motherwork as “work for the day to come is motherwork, whether it is on behalf of one's own biological children, or for the children of one's own racial ethnic community, or to preserve the earth for those children who are yet unborn.” In considering the weight white supremacy bears on Black caregivers and children, this chapter conducts a literary analysis of key scenes in three works of African American Literature: Toni Morrison's A Mercy, N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, and Edward P. Jones’ The Known World. The selected texts attend to state-sanctioned reproductive violence and the burden it places on Black caregivers, compelling them to participate in their children's subjugation as well as their own.
The final pages address Diamond Reynolds’ livestreaming of Philando Castile's fatal encounter with Minnesota police as a scene of reproductive injustice and its ramifications on Reynolds’ daughter witnessing Castile's execution, to consider the negotiations Black caregivers are forced to make in the face of white supremacy.
