"Mothercoin tells the stories of a group of Central American and Mexican women who have spent years caring and cleaning in the private homes of Houston, Texas. Scholar Elizabeth Cummins Muñoz traces each woman's journey from her childhood at home, across dangerous borders and unfamiliar terrain, and into a working world marked by domestic demands, hard-earned wages, and care devoted to other women's children in order to provide for their own. In taking up the mothercoin--the work of mothering, divorced from family and exchanged in a global market--immigrant nannies embody a grave contradiction: while the "women's work" of childcare and housekeeping is relegated to the private sphere and remains largely invisible to the public world, the love and labor required to mother are fundamental to the functioning of that world."-- Back cover.
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