“o give myself reasons to live,” as Nigerian novelist Ben Okri put it. Against the grind, I tried to preserve a couple of hours every day to write, usually before dawn. The idea that it is admirable for mothers to perform heroic tasks without the slightest entitlement to glory, or even gratitude, benefits literally everyone but mothers. A kind of epic without the heroic attitude.” Insert eye roll. “ Maman and her poverty,” laments philosopher Roland Barthes in Mourning Diary, “her struggle, her misfortunes, her courage. That second marriage, that surrogate parent, gave me no reprieve from the sense of crushing responsibility, and real economic precarity, that drove me to constantly work multiple jobs at a time. I would have betrayed myself, anyone, any value that got in the way of me being “a good mom.” For many years, we were on our own, until I fell in love and married my son’s chosen father. We have never received a single birthday card, phone call, or cent of child support.
Not long after my son’s first birthday, his biological father vanished from our lives. Both my parents were low-waged factory workers-my mother in electronics, my father in textiles. My son was born two weeks after I graduated high school, nine days before I turned 18, six months after my father passed away, and seven years after my family migrated from Indonesia. What troubles me about Naomi’s choice to leave her son and deploy through space on a mission of her own is that I know I would have likely done the opposite I would have betrayed myself, anyone, any value that got in the way of me being “a good mom.” We have added to this baseline the expectation that mothers also “self-realize” through our careers. We have, in fact, changed very little, if any, of what is demanded of mothers: to function as (unpaid) primary caregivers for our children, to sacrifice our own needs for our families while expecting little to no reciprocity. Naomi is “a bad mother.” Even by the feminist-friendly metrics of the 21 stcentury. Naomi Nagata, the soaring woman, is one of the main protagonists in the critically acclaimed science fiction series The Expanse, which completed its six-season run as an Amazon Original in early 2022. Yet, speculation only works when it holds enough recognizable elements for us to see ourselves, to feel invested in the decisions and outcomes of imaginary characters. The best of science fiction creates enough distance between a speculative reality and our own to allow for escapism. Barefaced and suitless, she shoots out of the ship like an arrow through the vacuum between stars. She injects blood oxygenator into her thigh and pushes a button the door slides open. Her teenage son watches her through a glass pane from the adjoining hallway. Millions of miles away from Earth, this door is all that separates her from lightless, airless space. A brown-skinned woman with close-cut hair is standing in a metal room, facing a metal door.