Do Empathy Book Club: Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change
Do Empathy Book Club: Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change Online
Laurel Ridge staff and faculty are welcome to join us for the Do Empathy Book Series, a monthly book discussion that encourages us to see through others' eyes and grow in understanding of the human experience. Whether you read all the book, some of it, or none, you're welcome to join us! Participation in group discussion is not required to attend and all are welcome to engage however much or little they're comfortable.
March's book is Angela Garbes' Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change (256 p.), an exploration into the way systems exploit caregiving and how the essential work of mothering can fix not just family life, but society. Join us as we consider:
- Why women of color do the majority of care work
- How individualized and isolated mothering can often be
- Why the labor of caretaking is undervalued and undercompensated
Register through this page for a calendar invitation, event reminders, and notifications of when the book is ready for check-out. Registrants will be notified when the library has copies available for loan, typically five weeks in prior to discussion!
The Covid-19 pandemic shed fresh light on a long-overlooked truth: mothering is among the only essential work humans do. In response to the increasing weight placed on mothers and caregivers—and the lack of a social safety net to support them—writer Angela Garbes found herself pondering a vital question: How, under our current circumstances that leave us lonely, exhausted, and financially strained, might we demand more from American family life?
In Essential Labor, Garbes explores assumptions about care, work, and deservedness, offering a deeply personal and rigorously reported look at what mothering is, and can be. A first-generation Filipino-American, Garbes shares the perspective of her family's complicated relationship to care work, placing mothering in a global context—the invisible economic engine that has been historically demanded of women of color.
Garbes contends that while the labor of raising children is devalued in America, the act of mothering offers the radical potential to create a more equitable society. In Essential Labor, Garbes reframes the physically and mentally draining work of meeting a child's bodily and emotional needs as opportunities to find meaning, to nurture a deeper sense of self, pleasure, and belonging. This is highly skilled labor, work that impacts society at its most foundational level.
Part galvanizing manifesto, part poignant narrative, Essential Labor is a beautifully rendered reflection on care that reminds us of the irrefutable power and beauty of mothering.
