“In Essential Labor, Angela Garbes defines motherhood as a form of collective labor, contemplating love as a communal act and envisioning a society in which care work is no longer considered separate from or lesser than paid work. This book is a bold and generous offering that brings us closer to a future in which the everyday labor of care is treated with the reverence and value it is truly worth. Everyone should read this book."”
—Carvell Wallace, New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Sixth Man
“You might think this is a book for parents. You’re wrong. Essential Labor expands our understanding of what ‘mothering’ can and should look like; it’s a book for anyone — including and especially people who aren’t parents — who wants to imagine what a more equitable and caring community could look like.”
—Anne Helen Petersen, author of Out of Office and Can’t Even
“Essential Labor is for those of us who are exhausted and disoriented by these pandemic years but also eager to learn how to better care for our families, our communities, and ourselves. It’s become abundantly clear that no one is coming to save us; so how do we save each other, beginning with our youngest? Through rigorous research, vulnerable reflections, and lush writing, Garbes explores that question in ways that will crack open your heart and mind. Beyond laying out the challenges to raising whole and healthy children in a world shaped by capitalism, colonization, misogyny, and white supremacy, Garbes offers a warm, inviting vision of how we might ensure our own survival in a rapidly changing world. Essential Labor is the book we need right now.”
—Dani McClain, author of We Live For The We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood
"In Essential Labor, Angela Garbes challenges all of our preconceived notions about the value and visibility of mothering, and indeed, all caregiving work. She asks us to recognize how our personal biases and complicity in larger systems have caused us to so consistently privilege one kind of motherhood (white, thin, heteronormative, wealthy) over all others. And she then blows it all apart, and imagines a far better world, with gorgeous prose and heart-breaking precision.”
—Virginia Sole-Smith, author of The Eating Instinct
“Meditation, memoir, and manifesto in one, this book makes a case for the mother in all of us. It’s an expansive and intimate testament to how and why we should care for others — and ourselves.”
—Ligaya Mishan, New York Times writer and coauthor of Filipinx
"Essential Labor is exactly the right book, written by exactly the right author, at exactly the right moment. Angela Garbes's work will help us put ourselves, our families, and our communities back together in a way that is more compassionate, more embodied, and more alive than before."
—Emily Nagoski, Ph.D., New York Times bestselling author of Come As You Are and Burnout
“I have never felt more held, challenged, invigorated, and called to action by a book. Angela Garbes seamlessly weaves together memoir, research, and cultural analysis in a way that is expansive, beautiful, and profoundly intimate. She offers a path forward for family life that is instinctive, generous, and revolutionary, sounding a note that American society badly needs to hear. I know I will think about this book for the rest of my life—it's that important.”
—Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State
