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Acknowledgments I wrote this book between 2009 and 2012, but in many ways the project started long before this. Since becoming a mother, I have been immersed in thinking about motherhood and for fifteen years I have been writing about it. Some of the ideas contained here have their roots in earlier work presented or published elsewhere. Chapter 2 originates from an essay earlier published as “The Adoptive Maternal Body: A Queer Paradigm for Mothering?” in Park (2006). This article marked my first turn toward using queer theory to think about mothering and the chapter continues to benefit from the astute philosophical insights and friendly editorial assistance of Rebecca Kukla on that earlier version. Chapter 3 represents the evolution in my thinking about transracial adoption over two decades. I thank Maureen Reddy for her feedback on my earliest (although I now think somewhat naïve) published attempts to think about resisting racism in mothering a child of color (see Park 1996) and for encouraging my use of personal narrative in theorizing my experiences of mothering. Chapter 3 also benefits from my crossdisciplinary collaboration with Cheryl Green on legal and scientific interpretations of the best interests of transracially adopted children (see Park and Green 2000). As an African American mother, a social worker and, most importantly, as my friend, Cheryl taught me how to think about adoption from the perspective of black mothers and black social workers. I miss her compassionate, witty, and unflinchingly honest presence in this world, as do many others. Material in Chapter 4 was previously published as “Real (M)othering: The Metaphysics of Maternity in Children’s Literature” in Adoption Matters (see Park 2005). This essay was one of my early attempts to bring cultural studies to bear on issues of mothering and also my first substantial written attempt to grapple with analyzing the troublesome notion of “real” mother as ix x Acknowledgments this plays itself out in various maternal theories and practices. Sally Haslanger, one of the book’s editors, gently cautioned me against playing too fast and loose with notions of constructed reality; although the readings of children’s literature contained here have taken a rather queerer turn than in the original essay, the chapter continues to benefit from Sally’s earlier cautions and guidance. The first half of Chapter 5 draws, in part, on my thinking about queer domestic time and space as explored in the essay “Is Queer Parenting Possible?” published in Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting (Park 2009). The second half of Chapter 5, on mothers who use technologies in ways that both replicate and resist ideals of good mothering, draws from the previously published “Cyborg Mothering” in Mothers Who Deliver: Feminist Interventions in Public and Interpersonal Discourse (Park 2010). Together these articles marked a turn in my thinking toward queer ways of “doing” family and inhabiting the places we call “home.” I am grateful to the editors for providing venues in which I could begin to work out these ideas. Thanks also to the various publishing houses for granting me the right to use portions of my earlier works here. Along the way, various portions of this work have also been presented at numerous conferences including the annual meetings of the Florida Philosophical Association, the National Women’s Studies Association , the Popular Culture Association, the Association for Research on Mothering (now the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement), the Society for Women in Philosophy, and the biennial Feminist Ethics and Social Theory conference, among others. I am grateful for the feedback and encouragement I have received from various participants at these conferences. Thank you also to the University of Central Florida for granting me a sabbatical leave in spring 2009 that enabled me to complete the first draft of my book manuscript and to the anonymous reviewers at SUNY Press who encouraged me to reframe the project—originally written around the theme of “real” mothering—as a book on queer mothering. Large portions of this book have been rewritten since its original submission and it is a much better project for their assistance and advice. I am especially thankful to my partner and colleague, Claudia Schippert, for the expertise in queer theory and the careful editorial eye she has brought to reading this manuscript, as well as for the many books and essays she has brought to my reading table over the past several years. It is always a pleasure to read and discuss books...

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