Maternal Abandonment and Queer Resistance in Twenty-First-Century Swedish Literature

Download or read book Maternal Abandonment and Queer Resistance in Twenty-First-Century Swedish Literature written by Jenny Björklund and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-06-03 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book questions why so many mothers leave their families in twenty-first-century Swedish literature, analyzing literary representations of maternal abandonment in relation to sociopolitical discourses. The volume draws on a queer-theoretical framework in order to highlight norm-critical dimensions, failure, and resistance in literature about motherhood. Jenny Björklund argues that novels about mothers who leave can be understood as ways to problematize and challenge Swedish-branded values like gender equality and a progressive family politics that promotes ideals of involved parenthood, the nuclear family, and pronatalism. The book also raises questions beyond the Swedish context about maternal ambivalence, family politics, and privilege and discusses how literature can work as resistance and provide alternatives to the current social order.