Disability and Mothering: Liminal Spaces of Embodied Knowledge

20. Intersecting Postcolonial Mothering and Disability: A Narrative of an Antiguan Mother and Her Son

275 20 Intersecting Postcolonial Mothering and Disability A Narrative of an Antiguan Mother and Her Son D e n i s e C o r d e l l a H u g h e s - Ta f e n On September 30, 2007, I became a mother. My transition into motherhood has helped me in understanding my own mother and how she has dealt with my brother’s disabilities. My mom and I share many qualities, but there are three major identifiers that have shaped our experiences— first, we are both mothers; second, both of us have sons who are US citizens by virtue of their having been born in the United States; and third, we are both immigrant women of African descent. We are both from the Caribbean island of Antigua. What sets up apart is that one of us has a child with a disability. My son has not been identified as having a disability , but my younger brother has been diagnosed with autism. An examination of disability on this small Caribbean island reveals how mothering a child with autism not only affects a woman’s position in this society but also complicates issues of nationhood. My research is best described as a narrative inquiry that includes ongoing biographical interviews with my mother, conversations with Antiguans, and my personal experience as an Antiguan sister and mother. The story of my mother and her journey in caring for her child with autism moves from discovery to seeking solutions and becoming an activist for change. This narrative adds to the growing discourse on postcolonial studies and disability studies by exploring the impact of mothering a disabled child on a postcolonial subject from a developing country and addresses the intersections of race and gender and class. Mainstream feminism has been charged as representing only selected voices—neglecting women 276 • Denise Cordella Hughes-Tafen of color, working-class women, and women from third-world countries . The feminist movement has been “challenged on the grounds of cultural imperialism, and of short sightedness in defining the meaning of gender in terms of middle class, white experiences and in terms of internal racism, classism, and homophobia (Mohanty, Russo, and Torres 1991, 7). Recently, black feminism (Collins 1998), Africana womanism (Hudson-Weems 1993), and womanism (A. Walker 1983) were added to the list describing various forms of feminism. Outside of the United States, women in postcolonial societies are also engaged in this dialogue. My effort to describe my mother’s experience in the Caribbean expands this conversation. Finally, I acknowledge my bias—the subject of my discourse is my own mother and brother, and my interpretation is through my own lens as a Caribbean mother living in the United States coupled with pertinent literature in this area. Caribbean Womanhood and Mothering Afro-Caribbean women bring another perspective to the dialogue on womanhood; at the heart of their dialogue is the place of mothers. Although Caribbean women have not given their forms of feminism specific names, Caribbean feminist literature has been engaged in “challenging dominant feminist theories and their inability to adequately engage with definitions of otherness” (Rowley 2001, 39). Because of its colonial anthropological inheritance, the Caribbean has mistakenly been described as a strong matriarchal society. Rowley argues, however, that the Caribbean is a matrifocal society. While both matriarchal and matrifocal concepts imply that women have power, what distinguishes the two is the “impact of women’s ability to act at the broader parameters of social, economic, political and ideological order” (Rowley 2001, 23). Matrifocality refers to societies where women are central in certain aspects of community life, for example, in their roles as mothers (R. Smith 1996; Rowley 2001; Mohammed 1998; Barrow 1996). On the other hand, matriarchy assumes that women have positions of power not only within the home but also ideologically, socially, and institutionally (Rowley 2001). Intersecting Postcolonial Mothering and Disability • 277 It is important to present a discussion of the factors that influence womanhood in the Caribbean in order to understand the impact being a mother with a son who has a disability has on Caribbean womanhood. Overall, this matrifocal nature of the Caribbean tends to inform concepts of womanhood. In her interviews with women from the Caribbean island of Tobago, Rowley noted that there were several factors that influence womanhood in this region. The first is reputation and respectability. Virtue is expected from Caribbean women (Mohammed 1998). There...