Research Catalog

Title

Contradicting maternity : HIV-positive motherhood in South Africa / Carol Long.

Author

Long, Carol.

Publication

Johannesburg, South Africa : Wits University Press, 2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

231 pages; 22 cm

Summary

"Drawing on rich and poignant interviews with mothers who have been diagnosed HIV-positive, "Contradicting Maternity" provides a rare perspective of motherhood from the mother's point of view. Whereas motherhood is often assumed to be a secondary identity compared to the central figure of the child, this book reverses the focus, arguing that maternal experience is important in its own right. The book explores the situation in which two very powerful identities, those of motherhood and of being HIV-positive, collide in the same moment. This collision takes place at the interface of complex, and often split, social and personal meanings concerning the sanctity of motherhood and the anxieties of HIV. The book offers an interpretation of how these personal and social meanings resonate with, and also fail to encompass, the experiences surrounding HIV-positive mothers. Photographs, academic literature and the accounts of real women are read with both a psychodynamic and discursive eye, highlighting the contradictions within maternal experience, as well as between maternal experience and the social imagination. "Contradicting Maternity" will appeal to scholars, students and practitioners in psychology, the social sciences and the health professions. The sensitive and readable analysis will also be of interest to mothers, whether HIV-positive or not"--Publisher's website.

Subject

• Motherhood > South Africa
• HIV-positive women > South Africa
• Mother and infant > South Africa
• HIV-positive women
• Mother and infant
• Motherhood
• Moderskap > Sydafrika
• HIV-positiva kvinnor > Sydafrika
• South Africa

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-228) and index.

Contents

Facing the HIV-positive mother -- The joys of motherhood -- Finding the HIV-positive mother -- Minding baby's body -- Mother's mind -- Mother's body -- Thula Mama -- Contradicting maternity.

ISBN

• 9781868144945
• 1868144941
• 9781868146246
• 1868146243

LCCN

2009404662

OCLC

• ocn351324717
• 351324717
• SCSB-1543186

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library