Laboring Histories: The “Reconciliation” of Maternity in the Poetry of Laurie Ann Guerrero

Abstract

Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of “facultad,” this study of poetry by Laurie Ann Guerrero identifies an emergent “maternal facultad,” a consciousness honed through the bodily and social experiences of mestiza maternity. Guerrero’s poems, “Babies Under the Skin” and “Reconciliation,” reveal how such consciousness is ignited through the mother’s body; her transformed body and subjectivity implicate her in multiple histories and violences of colonization and the medical/birthing industry. This study argues for the need for mothers to continue writing their bodies—to speak the “mess” of the body and of mother-work—creating an epistemically fertile site of knowledge production.