Revolutionary Mothering Quotes

“Our definition of queer is that which fundamentally transforms our state of being and the possibilities for life. That which is queer is that which does not reproduce the status quo.”
― Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines

“Science fiction creators taught me not to take the machine personally: the wear and tear, day in and day out, of microaggressions and weird looks and empty bank accounts, and off conversations and news reports and movies and some drunk guy trying to holla at me and another cop found not guilty for shooting a Black boy who wasn't even old enough to vote and our water tasting like rusty metal. While we do need to constantly unplug from the violence of the invisible machines, we aren't going to survive simply by boycotting products made in Isreali settlements or having multiracial babies. We aren't going survive by "voting with our dollars," and we aren't going to make a revolution through the purity of our lifestyles.”
― Mai’a Williams, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines

“I've stopped taking it all so personally. The racism and capitalism and ecocide, the sexism and homophobia, how tired everyone in the United States seems even though they claim they are living the best life in the best country in the world. When folks are being worked to the bone and drinking poisoned water in their coffee every morning, there isn't a lot of psychological energy left to figure out that this "best life" is all hoax and a wink. I imagine that anti-Blackness and capitalism and ableism are huge mindless machines hooked into people's spines, making unable to stand for what is right, Every day I pray, not for the revolution, not a savior, just to have the strength to constantly disentangles myself from the machine.”
― Mai’a Williams, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines

“It is telling that communal mothering, childcare, and caregiving continue to be one of the most neglected interventions in revolutionary struggle by virtue of their being considered mundane and cumbersome, unlike “real” political work. When this happens, the message poor mothers and their children receive is essentially that their presence and participation in revolutionary struggle do not matter, that they have nothing to contribute.”
― Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines

“The ethos of mothering involves valuing in and of itself a commitment to the survival and thriving of other bodies. It presents a fundamental contradiction to the logic of capitalism, which un-moors us from each other.”
― Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines

“Reproductive Justice is (1) The human right to not have a child; (2) The human right to have a child; and (3) The human right to parent in safe and healthy environments.”
― Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines