Articulating class, gender and race issues, we analyze black motherhood in novels by contemporary black women writers, the harsh reality of this experience under slavery, colonization and its consequences in contemporary society. They expose the bodily aspects of labor, in deep contrast with the patriarchal, idealized images of Western motherhood; in doing so, however, they reject its characterization as a purely immanent process which defines and entraps women's body in utterly distorted, essentialist terms.