Abstract

This article examines how three recent Anglophone novels of early motherhood, namely, Szilvia Molnar’s The Nursery (as Süt Lekesi), Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch (as Gece Kancığı), and Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor (as Asker ile Denizci), circulate in Turkish translation in a context shaped by pronatalist moral economies. Pairing peritextual analysis (covers, back-cover copy, blurbs, and bio notes) with close readings of selected key scenes of postpartum crisis, feral transformation, and toddler-year burnout, I show how Turkish editions both render and manage maternal negativity: translation choices modulate voice, affect, and register, while peritexts frame these mothers for local readability through medicalization, prestige satire, or a universalizing language of love and identity. I argue that, in these editions, “bad motherhood” does not simply travel; it is rewritten through translation and packaging, becoming at once marketable, recognizable, and carefully contained. I suggest the foreignness of these “bad moms” may provide a form of political insurance, allowing publishers to market maternal transgression as a global literary commodity while bypassing local scripts of sacred motherhood.

Recommended Citation

Süren, Merve S.. 2026. "Bad Mothers in Translation: Early Motherhood in Contemporary Turkish Editions." Journal of Feminist Scholarship 27 (Spring): 1-17. 10.23860/jfs.2026.27.01.