This project simultaneously enters and tracks the liminal spaces and positions that the (non)human female body inhabits as it oscillates between human and animal corporeality, especially through the process of “becoming-mother.” Turning to Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch (2021), K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary (2020), and Emily Habeck’s Sharkheart: A Love Story (2023)–three contemporary feminist speculative fiction novels published in the past five years that effectively respond to the current social and political climate surrounding the instable discourse of women’s reproductive and individual human rights–I interrogate the ways in which humanity, animality, and motherhood fluidly coexist and permeate each other in alternative worlds that allow women to reclaim and explore the true power of their (non)human female bodies. By first examining the physical and psychological differences that exist between the pregnant and maternal body and how they then inform the intrinsic bond forged between a mother and her offspring, this project brings these three novels together to follow the female body along its corporeal process of becoming both “mother” and “animal.” Put in conversation with the critical theory coming out of posthumanism, animal studies, new materialism, feminist science and technology studies, and maternal feminist thought, these three novels celebrate the female body across human and nonhuman worlds to showcase women’s ability to resist patriarchal capture and dismantle the cultural illusions of control that still work to define their corporeality and (non)human identity.
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