In this research article, Jinting Wu examines the lived experiences of mothers raising and educating children with disabilities in contemporary China. In the national project of cultivating “quality” citizens, and in the individual pursuit of successful child-rearing, mothers of special children in China are viewed as deficient for conceiving “less-than-perfect” offspring. Drawing on an ethnographic study in a special education school in Guangzhou, Wu explores motherhood’s intersections with disability, patriarchy, and state power as the site of social vulnerability and inequality in urban China and highlights the ways special mothers engage in moral experimentation, turning trying circumstances into opportunities to strive and transform. Working hard to be good mothers against many odds, these women are simultaneously the “suffering subjects” and “morally striving subjects,” and their experiences critique as well as shed new light on social justice.
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Jinting Wu (
https://orcid.org//0000-0002-5233-1659) is an assistant professor of educational culture, policy, and society at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. An anthropologist and comparative education scholar, she conducts research in the areas of rural minority education, disability and special education, immigrant youth and families, and educational meritocracy on the global stage. She is the recipient of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division B Outstanding Book Recognition Award for
Fabricating an Educational Miracle (State University of New York Press, 2016) and, in 2018, the AERA Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies Special Interest Group Early Career Award.