China Martens

China Marten‘s short story, “On the Road (with baby)” was published in Breeder: Real-Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers (Seal Press, 2001) and has had various other essays printed in publications such as Baltimore Indypendent Reader, HipMama, WIN Magazine, and Revolutionary Motherhood. She also is a zinestress extraordinaire producing titles such as BWI Spy, Supermarket Supermodel, and Catbird; was the submissions editor for the collaborative mama/papa zine project Mamaphiles #4 “Raising Hell”; a columnist for DIY newsprint publication Slug and Lettuce (from 1994 to 2004) and won Baltimore City Paper “Best Zine” Award for I was . . . a Student Nurse!

Since 2003, China has facilitated workshops to create support for parents and children in activist and radical communities. In 2009, she co-founded Kidz City, a radical childcare collective in Baltimore.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs guest-hosts The Laura Flanders Show and talks Revolutionary Mothering with China Martens, Mai’a Williams, Victoria Law and Cynthia Dewi Oka


The Future Generation: The Zine-Book for Subculture Parents, Kids, Friends & Others

SKU: 9781629634500
Author: China Martens
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 9781629634500
Published: 9/2017
Format: Paperback, mobi, ePub, PDF
Size: 7 x 10.5
Page count: 240
Subjects: Family-Relationships / Feminism

Praise

“The original punk parent zine.”
—Ariel Gore, Hip Mama

“Martens has been writing since long before the mommy wars were a media trope, but her work is a powerful response to punditry casting institutional and political problems as personal issues of ‘work-life balance’ for mothers (notably, not fathers).”
—Lisa Jervis, Bitch magazine

The Future Generation is a must read for anyone who wants to understand Adrienne Rich’s idea of mothering (Of Woman Born) based on the mother’s own experience, not the patriarchal definition of motherhood in which mothers must be surveilled, controlled, advised, and punished. For here is an evolution of mothering, a memoir of a conscious mother. Get it. Read it. Pass it on.”
—Katherine Arnoldi, author of The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom and All Things Are Labor

“I am deeply inspired by The Future Generation. I remember feeling seen, held, and affirmed when I read the anthology. I felt like I had a sister in all the complex things I was feeling as a new mother.”
—Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, author of Karma’s Footsteps and Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation

The Future Generation is deeply touching and eye-openingly intimate.”
—Jordannah Elizabeth, author of Don’t Lose Track



Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines

SKU: 9781629631103
Edited: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams • Preface by Loretta J. Ross
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 9781629631103
Published: 3/2016
Format: Paperback, mobi, ePub, PDF
Size: 6 x 9
Page count: 272
Subjects: Women’s Studies/Family-Parenting

Praise

“This collection is a treat for anyone that sees class and that needs to learn more about the experiences of women of color (and who doesn’t?!). There is no dogma here, just fresh ideas and women of color taking on capitalism, anti-racist, anti-sexist theory-building that is rooted in the most primal of human connections, the making of two people from the body of one: mothering.”
—Barbara Jensen, author of Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America

“For women of color, mothering—the art of mothering—has been framed by the most virulent systems, historically: enslavement, colonialism, capitalism, imperialism. We have had few opportunities to define mothering not only as an aspect of individual lives and choices, but as the processes of love and as a way of structuring community. Revolutionary Mothering arrives as a needed balm.”
—Alexis De Veaux, author of Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde

“Although it is primarily written for mothers of all ages, the issues that are raised—about family, love, struggle, sacrifice, and acceptance—are universal as they speak to the revolutionary that exists within all of us.”
—Karsonya Wise Whitehead, PhD, assistant professor of communication and African and African American studies, Loyola University Maryland

Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines is juicy, gutsy, vulnerable, and very brave. These women insist on having their children in a society that does not welcome them, in a world that is rapidly falling apart. Their dream for their children, based on their love of them, encompasses the sorrow and the joy that mothers everywhere, whether human, animal, or plant, feel at this time. A radical vision, many radical visions of how to mother in a time of resistance and of pain.”
—Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and activist

“This is the book for readers who know mothering is not just about a baby and a mother or parents in an isolated suburban nursery, but that mothering happens in a context of generations, a context of racial history, and in a spiritual context; that it takes place from the shore line to the front line, in times of scarcity and abundance; that it is queer and love-filled. Here, revolution, love, and mothering are an inseparable unity.”
—Faith Holsaert, coeditor of Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts of Women in SNCC



Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities

SKU: 9781604863963
Editors: Victoria Law and China Martens
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 9781604863963
Published: 9/2012
Format: Paperback, mobi, ePub, PDF
Size: 9 x 6
Page count: 256
Subjects: Politics/Activism/Family/Relationships

Praise

“This book is mind-blowing, brilliant, and urgently needed! It is full of useful models and strategies for creating resistance that breaks down barriers to participation for children and people caring for children, and integrates deeply transformative commitments to building radically different activist culture and practice. This is a must-read for anyone trying to build projects based in collective action.” —Dean Spade, author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law

Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind is an essential resource for the interdependence revolution in progress. As a queer, chronically ill woman of color who loves and needs the parents and kids in my communities, I am hungry for these on the ground stories of how parents, allies, comrades, fam and friends are rewriting the world by refusing to hold mamas, papis and kids anywhere but at the center of our movements and communities, where we’re supposed to be.” —Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, co-editor, The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities

“Activist mothers Law and Martens propose that radical movements interested in winning must welcome parents and their children—the youngest rabble rousers. They have created a practical guide for us all to do just that, but with zero guilt trips and moralizing. Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind puts teeth into the slogan, Another World is Possible by showing us what a healthy left might look like.” —James Tracy, co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times

“A powerful mixture of self-help and literature, putting ‘family values’ in a new light and on the agenda of social justice movements. And it’s not just self-help for radicals who are parents, but food for everyone who seeks to become their better, more compassionate selves.” —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, activist, teacher, author of Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years: 1960-1975



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