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Laboring Histories: The "Reconciliation" Of Maternity In The Poetry Of Laurie Ann Guerrero, Larissa M. Mercado-López

Diálogo

Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of “facultad,” this study of poetry by Laurie Ann Guerrero identifies an emergent “maternal facultad,” a consciousness honed through the bodily and social experiences of mestiza maternity. Guerrero’s poems, “Babies Under the Skin” and “Reconciliation,” reveal how such consciousness is ignited through the mother’s body; her transformed body and subjectivity implicate her in multiple histories and violences of colonization and the medical/birthing industry. This study argues for the need for mothers to continue writing their bodies—to speak the “mess” of the body and of mother-work—creating an epistemically fertile site of knowledge production.