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Book World: 'The Three Mothers' honors the women who made Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin
Lisa Page, The Washington Post
Feb. 12, 2021
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Motherhood is said to be its own reward. You learn to give of yourself, and this will stretch you, as a person. But you may also learn to put yourself in the background, which will shrink you - and even make you disappear.
History does this to us anyway, argues scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs. Black women in particular are largely erased from the American historical trajectory - marginalized, at best. Tubbs tries to remedy this with a new book about women who gave birth to extraordinary men, women who "have been hidden not only behind their sons but also behind their husbands . . . presented as footnotes that are out of context." In "The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation," Tubbs resurrects these women and shows them to be players with agency and influence.