In this enjoyable and insightful book, Yi-Lin Yu takes the heated and ongoing feminist debate over motherhood and maternal subjectivity onto a new plane - in search of a new synthesis. With its specific focus on the three-tiered matrilineal narratives, Mother, She Wrote is distinguished by its complex and innovative deployment of psychoanalytic subject-relations theories, and a meticulous and detailed discussion of various literary texts, which calls forth a powerful reformulation of these narratives. One of the main strengths of this book is this simultaneous and tactful command of theory and literary practice. Apart from advocating the burgeoning development of women's writing of matrilineal narratives, the author also sheds new light on further research in the area of feminist motherhood and mothering. In this enjoyable and insightful book, Yi-Lin Yu takes the heated and ongoing feminist debate over motherhood and maternal subjectivity onto a new plane - in search of a new synthesis. With its specific focus on the three-tiered matrilineal narratives, Mother, She Wrote is distinguished by its complex and innovative deployment of psychoanalytic subject-relations theories, and a meticulous and detailed discussion of various literary texts, which calls forth a powerful reformulation of these narratives. One of the main strengths of this book is this simultaneous and tactful command of theory and literary practice. Apart from advocating the burgeoning development of women's writing of matrilineal narratives, the author also sheds new light on further research in the area of feminist motherhood and mothering. Tables ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1(12) Part 1: The Feminist Theoretical Context 13(48) Chapter 1 Feminism and Matrilinealism 15(16) Chapter 2 Feminism, Matrilinealism, and Psychoanalysis 31(30) Part 2: New Feminist Family Romances in Contemporary Matrilineal Narratives 61(64) Chapter 3 New Feminist Family Romances 63(14) Chapter 4 Marianne Fredriksson's Hanna's Daughters 77(10) Chapter 5 Jung Chang's Wild Swans 87(8) Chapter 6 Margaret Forster's Hidden Lives 95(6) Chapter 7 Margaret Drabble's The Peppered Moth 101(10) Chapter 8 A Poetics of Matrilineal Narratives 111(14) Part 3: Diasporic Matrilineal Narratives in Contemporary North American Women's Fiction 125(88) Chapter 9 Diasporic Matrilineal Narraties 127(8) Chapter 10 Toni Morrison's Beloved 135(16) Chapter 11 Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John 151(12) Chapter 12 Joy Kogawa's Obasan 163(16) Chapter 13 Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club 179(14) Chapter 14 Judy Budnitz's If I Told You Once 193(12) Chapter 15 A Poetics of Diasporic Matrilineal Narratives 205(8) Conclusion 213(6) Bibliography 219(10) Index 229