Spotlight Lecture: Angela Garbes & Chelsea Conaboy

Angela Garbes and Chelsea Conaboy will be discussing their books Essential Labor and Mother Brain.

About the books
In Essential Labor, Garbes explores assumptions about care, work, and deservedness, offering a deeply personal and rigorously reported look at what mothering is, and can be. A first-generation Filipino-American, Garbes shares the perspective of her family’s complicated relationship to care work, placing mothering in a global context—the invisible economic engine that has been historically demanded of women of color.

Mother Brain is a groundbreaking exploration of the parental brain that untangles insidious myths from complicated realities.Conaboy expected things to change with the birth of her child. What she didn’t expect was how different she would feel. But she would soon discover what was behind this: her changing brain. Though Conaboy was prepared for the endless dirty diapers, the sleepless nights, and the joy of holding her newborn, she did not anticipate this shift in self, as deep as it was disorienting.

Portland Public Library Spotlight Lectures bring authors into engaging conversation with their peers. This year, these conversations follow the theme A Light on Motherhood. Hear about modern experiences of pregnancy, motherhood, and how they exist in our current culture.

Converstaions are followed by audience Q&A and a book signing.

The series is presented by Portland Public Library with various partners.