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savvylit's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Essential Labor is an excellent text that rests on Garbes' thesis that mother is an action word. Mother is a verb: we mother, we are mothered. Caring for each other and our children is not gender exclusive; though Garbes does explore the cultural expectations that promote care-work as solely a woman's job. Garbes illustrates how truly essential care-work is to every one of us. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a backdrop for much of her own experience mothering two young children, Garbes demonstrates how modern ideas of nuclear families only isolate people and make us worse at caretaking. Communal care - even if it's as straightforward as sharing childcare duties with another young family in your COVID bubble - genuinely benefits every single person involved.
Beyond Garbes' exceedingly effective call to rethink mothering, Essential Labor is also an intimately personal memoir. Not only does Garbes not shy away from detail when it comes to her and her husband as parents, but she also examines motherhood through the lens of her experience as a child of Filipinx immigrants. Garbes recalls her childhood and her parents through a curious, empathetic, and decolonial lens that was consistently captivating to read.
I am not a literal mother though I have participated in paid care-work throughout quite a lot of my life: babysitting, tutoring, teaching, and nannying. However, you do not have to have had experience as a parent or care-worker to understand Garbes' call for mothering as social change. Essential Labor is absolutely for anyone and everyone interested in making the world a better place for ourselves and future generations.
Final note, I experienced this as an audiobook read by Angela Garbes herself and it was a very delightful way to experience such a personal and powerful text.
Beyond Garbes' exceedingly effective call to rethink mothering, Essential Labor is also an intimately personal memoir. Not only does Garbes not shy away from detail when it comes to her and her husband as parents, but she also examines motherhood through the lens of her experience as a child of Filipinx immigrants. Garbes recalls her childhood and her parents through a curious, empathetic, and decolonial lens that was consistently captivating to read.
I am not a literal mother though I have participated in paid care-work throughout quite a lot of my life: babysitting, tutoring, teaching, and nannying. However, you do not have to have had experience as a parent or care-worker to understand Garbes' call for mothering as social change. Essential Labor is absolutely for anyone and everyone interested in making the world a better place for ourselves and future generations.
Final note, I experienced this as an audiobook read by Angela Garbes herself and it was a very delightful way to experience such a personal and powerful text.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Pandemic/Epidemic, Xenophobia, and Misogyny
Moderate: Pregnancy
kylieqrada's review
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
I read this in a day. Not what i was expecting, but absolutely stunning. This is more like a memoir interspersed with the author's personal philosophy of mothering as change-making. I was blown away and inspired by Angela's deeply vulnerable exploration of her experiences as a child and mother.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Ableism, and Body shaming
Moderate: Sexual content, Xenophobia, and Fatphobia
Minor: Medical trauma, Mental illness, and Rape
deedireads's review against another edition
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.5
Essential Labor has been on my TBR for awhile, and when I was in the mood for a nonfiction audiobook recently I decided to download it. It’s pretty short, and while I didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong with it, I did feel like it stayed a bit more surface-level than I expected.
Angela Garbes is a Filipino-American writer and mother, and the pandemic’s focus on “essential labor,” combined with the acute challenges parents faced, inspired her to write this book. I thought the first half was the strongest; it was rooted much more in Garbes’ personal experiences and felt like a good combination of memoir and social justice writing. The second half reads more like individual lessons about different areas of social justice, and while there is a slight lens of relating these things back to motherhood, she stays very high-level.
I didn’t hate this, but I had expected a lot more out of it. She could have written a whole book on any one of those latter chapters and held my attention better — there is so much more to analyze and consider. I would recommend this to someone who feels like they’re just getting started with social advocacy or maybe wants a birds-eye view of how modern-day social issues intersect with parenting — but if you feel pretty well versed, maybe not.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Xenophobia, Medical trauma, and Racism
Moderate: Body shaming, Ableism, and Fatphobia
Minor: Sexual content
khymihr's review against another edition
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Xenophobia, Body shaming, and Ableism
wngwendy's review
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.75
Such an impactful book, I feel like these are the things that my mother could never tell me due the way she is/was raised. Such a enjoyable read!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fatphobia
Minor: Body shaming, Colonisation, Mental illness, and Xenophobia
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