Mothering In Context

W/ Cherise Morris & Eleanor Oaks

Spotlighting the metaphorical connective tissue of motherhood, guests explored a holistic view of maternal health through participating in a two-part poetry workshop & breastmilk-portrait experience. After this workshop, participants' photos and writing is being to create two books, one to be distributed for free and the other to purchase.

This program was made possible by The Priority Health Total Health Foundation.

Participating Artists & Collaborators

Cherise Morris is an award-winning writer, interdisciplinary artist, ritualist and spiritual worker born and raised in rural Virginia, living in Detroit, Michigan. Her interdisciplinary performance work and writing has been supported by several regional and national organizations and has received funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Poets & Writers, and The Knight Foundation.

Merging experimental writing, poetry and prayer with performance, movement, sound and ritual practices, Morris’ work creates transformative spaces that invite communities to explore, imagine and continue the infinite work of individual healing and collective transformation. Her writing has previously appeared in The Iowa Review, Longreads, Black Warrior Review, Truthout and elsewhere. Her essays have twice been recognized as notable works of literary nonfiction in The Best American Essays Series 2018 and 2019 and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is a 2019 Kresge Fellow. She is the winner of the 2024 Global Black Women’s Nonfiction Manuscript Prize and her debut book, the cosmic matter of Black lives, is forthcoming.

Eleanor Oakes is an artist, educator, and mother living in Detroit, MI. Her ongoing project, “love’s labor,” uses breastmilk in a historical photographic process to create contemporary portraits of early motherhood that insert a feminist narrative into art history while reflecting on nourishment, bodily memory as transferred through ancestry, and society’s reliance on the unsupported labor of parenting. Her work emphasizes the importance of care as a fundamental building block to connection, both to each other and the environment.