Being that my blog has been alive now for a week, I went googling to find other links to mama of color bloggers. Instead, I found this interesting article, "Mommy & Me: Looking for the Missing Voices in the Burgeoning World of Mom Blogs." Veronica Arreola writes about the exclusivitey of online mama spaces that rarely include women of color or low-income women. She attributes this lack of diversity to the digital divide, little outreach, economic barriers, and the cultural differences between mamas of color and mainstream mamas.
I can see how all of these reasons can lead to lack of participation. During my pregnancy and after Soluna was born, I went searching for books written by mamas of color and found very few. I checked on-line for support sites for mamas of color and found only the Mocha Moms. At the time the site didn't apply to me since I was planning on going back to work full-time. When I went on mainstream mama sites, I didn't always feel like the topics were relevant or spoke to my experiences. Needing to talk to other mamas of color was a necessity and I luckily found a Colorful Mamas group/listserv forming here in the bay. But, we meet on a private listserv or in real spaces rather than throwing out our issues to the internet world. There are topics that come up in our discussions that I don't think any of us would feel comfortable bringing up in spaces where we were on the margins. How do you have frank discussions about how race, class, politics, globalization, immigration, capitalism and culture shape the experiences of mamas and our babes in the unsafe space of the internet?
Hmmm... But I see the need to at least begin talking about these subjects and to connect mamas of color to find mutual support. Where are you at mama of color bloggers?? Maybe we can start our own thing!
If you know any mama of color bloggers, let me know.
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