'To strive for a different place than the one we have lived': Following Minnie Bruce Pratt's 'long stepping out' toward a wor(l)d after mother.

Abstract

In this work, we explore Minnie Bruce Pratt's white lesbian mothering praxis, teasing out possibilities she leaves for unsettling white imperial/colonial motherhood and the family. Framing our exploration of her life and work with a discussion of settler sexuality, white maternalism, and Black feminist revolutionary mothering we put forth an understanding of Pratt as an insider pushed out. Engaging her poetry and prose we examine how Pratt's transgression is not simply, or at least not only, what led her to take up her lifelong, living intersectional feminist politic. Thinking with Sara Ahmed we tease out Pratt's "complicated" way toward living a solidarity praxis and moving in unending struggle toward collective liberation. Lastly, we engage writing as a method of inquiry and theorize with Pratt, bringing our learning with and from her in conversation with others, especially Sophie Lewis who asks us to consider to what end we are queering mothering. Locating Pratt within world-building and world-ending genealogies that map how we can find and lose ourselves (and more), we ask how we might join her "on foot, in a long stepping out" (2013, 28) toward a wor(l)d after mother?