Our One Privilege Over the Patriarchy
In the fall of 2019, I received a Facebook response to my advertisement for proofreading services. Dr. Kenya Mitchell needed a proofreader for a tenure-track application, and I, recently having left my job as a managing editor for a medical cannabis website, gratefully accepted. This sparked the start of a supportive, wonderful, professional connection that slowly blossomed into friendship. A few months later, Kenya found a publisher for her proposed book on black mother mortality in the United States, but with the publisher being Demeter Press and therefore in Canada, Kenya needed a Canadian co-editor. She asked me, and the project was in motion.
My professional background is diverse and international, having worked for Canadian, American, and Scottish companies with clients from across Europe, North America, New Zealand, and Asia in various aspects of writing, editing, and proofreading. This has given me insight into the different systems women navigate, day in and day out, in order to survive in an often hostile world. In 2013, I took a course in my undergraduate degree discussing the history of pregnant bodies in literature. This shone a light on a hitherto neglected area of my interests and studies — that of bodily autonomy in pregnancy. Previously, I had assumed the ability to become pregnant was a given, and autonomy once pregnant a matter of course. This class forced me to question not only my own assumptions, but also my trust in conventional medical pathways for giving birth. Suddenly, I was considering midwives with respect, admiration, and, if I am able to become pregnant one day, as part of my future. In 2015, I wrote a novella on the personal impacts of grief for my undergraduate dissertation. In this work, I focused specifically on school shootings which had gained special attention that year in the media. The novella explores what happens when the trauma and grief of families has left the spotlight — in other words, when we as a society have moved on, and left those most affected behind.
Then, in 2016 while completing my master’s in Gender Studies and Feminist Research at Western University, I wrote my dissertation about gender, sexuality, and resistance in depictions of pregnancies out of wedlock in eighteenth-century Scottish ballads. Throughout this year-long course, I took classes discussing indigenous literature in Canada, queer theory, the conflict in Palestine, and a range of literature and theory courses that put Canadian society under the microscope. Not only did this further support my belief that something seriously needed doing, but my own dissertation showed me that women’s one privilege over the patriarchy — that of the ability to reproduce — was constantly under threat, as women are continuously stripped of control over their own bodies.
But, I got itchy feet. So, in September 2016, I packed up my things and my beagle and moved to Glasgow, Scotland, where I started freelance proofreading for Freight Books. At the same time, I began my Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow. What began as a more thorough investigation of gender and sexuality in ballads quickly became a study of motherhood, gender, feminism, and class in the works of the writer and translator, Willa Muir. My thesis, “The Other Muir: Willa Muir, Motherhood, and Writing”, is due for submission at the end of March 2021. The theoretical and historical analysis for this thesis has increased my understanding of the dual role of mother and independent individual that women face after having a child — a role that is often complicated with intersections of race, class, nationality, and ethnicity, and sexuality.
I currently balance freelance writing and proofreading with pub work while I focus as much time and attention as possible on my Ph.D. thesis and the Mother Mortality Project. But it can be a lot. To re-energize and reconnect with the purpose of my work, me and my beagle-cross, Henley, escape to the seaside when we can, the hills if we’re lucky, and for a delicious meal, a book, and a bath when adventures aren’t possible. We live in Stirling, Scotland, surrounded by cows and the hills.
Emily Pickard @ Mother Mortality Project
Supporting Diverse Mothers Through Storytelling
