We Live for the We

A longtime reporter on race, reproductive justice, policy and politics, Dani McClain is now also the mother of a baby girl. Like all first time mothers, she has countless questions about raising her child to be ethical and kind, but also to be healthy, happy, and safe in what she, as a black woman, knows to be an unjust, even hostile, society to people of color.

In We Live for the We, McClain interviews mothers and experts, asking the tough, scary questions, but also celebrating the joys of motherhood and the hope that children bring. Following a child's development from infancy to the teenage years, the book touches on everything from the importance of creativity to building a mutually supportive community to navigating one's relationship with power and authority.

McClain shows that how we parent is perhaps even more important than how we participate in direct action and advocacy. It will determine how we survive and what kind of society we build for the next generation.

“"Motherhood is one of the most contested and policed categories that black women occupy in American society. With her intellectual gravitas, gifted storytelling, and feminist insights, Dani McClain's We Live for We brilliantly chronicles how African-American women confront these contradictions as deeply political and personal acts. This book is a timely, compassinoate, and eye-opening contribution to our most pressing debates about race and gender."-- Salamishah Tillet, Henry Rutgers Professor of African American and African Studies and Creative Writing”

"We Live for the We is a crucial chapter in the history of Black motherhood as a political act. Enslaved mothers taught their babies to read without being discovered, now Black mothers must teach our children to stay safe from police, from sexual predators, from racist teachers. McClain shows that we must be strategic with our rage and still vulnerable with our love -- our political work requires this range. This text showcases the harsh realities of Black motherhood and the best solutions currently available, while pointing to the ways we must still change everything for the sake of our children."--dream hampton, writer, filmmaker, and organizer, andproducer of Surviving R. Kelly
"Dani McClain charts the rich territory of black motherhood, an element of American life that is overlooked and undervalued even as our society benefits from its tenacity and love. We Live for the We is deeply researched, compassionately reported, and soars with the beauty and urgency of McClain's truest expertise: her own life as a black woman raising a young daughter. Parenting is political and we all have much to learn from the work McClain chronicles in these pages. This book is a gift, and it is for everyone."--Angela Garbes, author of Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey through the Science and Culture ofPregnancy
"Dani McClain has produced an important work that will show the world just how powerful and transformative radical Black motherhood is and always has been. This path can be very isolating at times but it's refreshing to see that I'm not alone in this process and now other moms, dads, and allies will have the tools to join the fight to make the next generation more self-possessed and feminist than those before them."--Jamilah Lemieux, writerand cultural critic
"Dani McClain has written that rarest and most satisfying of books -- one that illuminates a fraught political and cultural landscape through the pinhole aperture of her own mothering and the questions it surfaces. It is both intimate and epic, sweet and fierce. As a white mother, it read as inspiration and provocation for the kind of parallel questions I need and want to be asking. I'll be a better parent and citizen for having looked through McClain's dynamic lens."--Courtney E. Martin, author of The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream
"Dani McClain is one of the most lucid, insightful, and gifted critics working today: her work sings with eloquence and is driven by analytical fury. This is the book we parents need right now!"--Michael Eric Dyson
"Dani McClain reminds us why Black women, specifically Black mothers, are the backbones of every single society. While we are often neglected and disenfranchised our labor is what has built democracies around the globe. This is a must read for all Black mamas and our allies. Thank you Dani and thank you Dani's daughter for showing us the way forward."--Patrisse Khan-Cullors, author of When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
"Dani McClain's We Live for the We is more than a reimagining of motherhood. It's an equally soulful and skillful immersion into the questions of how we go beyond survival in a nation intent on the suffering of Black mothers and their children. The book refuses to let us run, every paragraph seeking the contour of who we really are in the dark and how our children will be protected, loved, and tenderly allowed to fail and grow by parents willing to revise what we've all been taught. This is the rare book that will change lives and public policy."--Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir
"I read this book shouting 'YES!', throwing up praise hands, pacing the floor, overcome with gratitude! We Live for the We is a glorious exploration of how we outgrow the isolating terror of oppression and lean into the interdependent wisdom of love. McClain asks questions that require readers to change -- change how we think of single parents, of discipline, good births, freedom, education, autonomy, community, safety, and ultimately, power. Conversational and precise, McClain uncovers roots of white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism in the ground beneath our children's feet. Parents and caregivers of all backgrounds can learn from McClain's deft reporting and storytelling, but Black mothers (and grandis, grammis, grandmas, aunties, sisters, godmothers, midwives, doulas and friends) will learn while also feeling celebrated and loved for how we have lived a legacy of village building, how we have survived the impossible together, and how we are responsible for a thriving Black future."--adrienne maree brown, author of EmergentStrategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good and co-editor of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Storiesfrom Social Justice Movements
"In this generous, well-researched book, Dani McClain bridges realism with idealism, and critique with our shared craving for the better world all of our children deserve. Generations of parents and community members will use this book to make decisions, to revive our hope, and to teach each other about the implications of difference in a stratified society. Most importantly, for me, this book engages and continues the brave multi-generational tradition of Black mothers sharing their own experiences and their revolutionary visions for the benefit of all people. Thank you, Dani McClain, for bringing your hardest questions, your rigorous observations, your priceless relationship with your daughter, and your open heart to this necessary work."--Alexis Pauline Gumbs, PhD, coeditor of RevolutionaryMothering: Love on the Front Lines
"Many mothers of my generation lacked safe and effective birth control, survived childhood sexual abuse, or were prematurely sterilized. These experiences shaped our understandings of pregnancy and motherhood. Dani McClain both acknowledges and departs from these painful realities with her portrait of motherhood as an act of liberation. She offers a window into the granularity of the challenges millennials face when parenting. This book describes parenting choices as empowering and bewildering at the same time and, in doing so, portrays the heart of Black mothering."--Loretta Ross, coauthor of Reproductive Justice: An Introduction and cofounder of SisterSongWomen of Color Reproductive Justice Collective
"Motherhood is one of the most contested and policed categories that black women occupy in American society. With her intellectual gravitas, gifted storytelling, and feminist insights, Dani McClain's We Live for We brilliantly chronicles how African-American women confront these contradictions as deeply political and personal acts. This book is a timely, compassionate, and eye-opening contribution to our most pressing debates about race and gender."--Salamishah Tillet, Henry Rutgers Professor of African American and African Studies and Creative Writing

Dani McClain is a contributing writer at The Nation and a fellow at The Nation Institute. McClain's writing has appeared in outlets including Slate, Colorlines, EBONY.com, The Rumpus, and Guernica. McClain lives with her family in Cincinnati.

A longtime reporter on race, reproductive justice, policy and politics, Dani McClain is now also the mother of a baby girl. Like all first time mothers, she has countless questions about raising her child to be ethical and kind, but also to be healthy, happy, and safe in what she, as a black woman, knows to be an unjust, even hostile, society to people of color. In We Live for the We , McClain interviews mothers and experts, asking the tough, scary questions, but also celebrating the joys of motherhood and the hope that children bring. Following a child's development from infancy to the teenage years, the book touches on everything from the importance of creativity to building a mutually supportive community to navigating one's relationship with power and authority. McClain shows that how we parent is perhaps even more important than how we participate in direct action and advocacy. It will determine how we survive and what kind of society we build for the next generation.

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