Angela Garbes, the acclaimed author of Like a Mother, reflects on the state of caregiving in America. In her new book Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, Garbes explores assumptions about care, work and deservedness, offering a deeply personal and rigorously reported look at what mothering is and can be. She places mothering in a global context to critically examine her perspectives of the complicated relationship to care work as a first-generation Filipino-American. Despite the mentally and physically demanding work mothers must endure in the absence of a social safety net to support them, she reframes caregiving as an opportunity to find meaning, to nurture a more profound sense of self, pleasure and belonging.

Join Angela Garbes and Jenny Odell for a powerful conversation on mothering as social change and how the act of caregiving offers the potential to create a more equitable society.

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This program is part of The Commonwealth Club's Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

Garbes photo by Elizabeth Rudge.