Table of ContentsIntroduction - Amany Alsiefy & Yesmina Khedhir Part I — Reclaiming Land, Memory, and Place in Matrilineal Worlds1. The Motherline Speaks: Storytelling, Memory, and Matrilineal Identity in Yoruba Oral Traditions - Bukola Oyeniyi2. We Are Indigenous Mothers: Matrilineal Memory, Resistance, and Motherwork in Peru - M. Carranza and Elizabeth Grigg3. Decolonizing Matrilineal Modernity: Khasi and Garo Kinship as Counter-Narratives to Western Patriarchy - Parvin Sultana4. Reclaiming Place in Teletherapy: Matrilineal Narratives and Land-Based Healing Beyond Western Modernity - Ezra N. S. LockhartPart II — Family Saga as Social and Political Resistance5.“We Will Not Forget Our Daughters “: Mothering and Memory Activism in the #BringBackOurGirls Campaign on Twitter - Blessing Datiri5. Mothering Without a Village: A Decolonial Autoethnography of Fractured Care, Displacement, and Matrilineal Memory - Marynes Castillo-Espinoza7.The Social Womb: Palestinian Motherhood Between Erasure and Political Resistance - Gihan AbouzeidPart III — Matricultural Visions: Roots and Rituals of Kinship8. Searching For My Grandmothers Gardens: Examining Abusuafie (i.e. Asante Matricentric Women’s Compounds) as “Matriculture” -Elizabeth Peprah-Asare9. Bearing the Name of One’s Grandmother: Memory, Kinship, and Silent Matrilineality among the Bakoko of Cameroon - Linda Silim Moundene10. Goddesses and Grihalakshmis: Uncovering Feminist Histories of Power in Ancient India - Lydia VK PandianPart IV — Motherhood and Mothering in Literature and Film11. The Matrilineal Ghost: Memory, Trauma, and the Absent Mother in Malayalam Cinema - Sony Jalarajan Raj and Adith K. Suresh.12. Southern Maternities: Gender, Naples, and Crime in Gomorrah: A Comparative Study - Susan Pursunati and Yasamin Taheri13. Memory and Resistance in the Palestinian Family Saga: The Arch Matriarch in Susan Abulhawa’s The Blue Between Sky and Water -Asmaa M. Farrag14. Wire Mother: The Technology of Childcare in Science Fiction - Delenn GanyoPart V — Threads of Hope and Despair: Testimonies of Mothers in Precarious Times15.Motherhood, Memory and Loss: Resisting Erasure - Redaa Odeh16. War, Mothers, and Mothering in Ukraine, Somalia, and Algeria - Saïd Khatibi17. Thread of Honor . . . And Keepers of the Secret - Razan Naiem AlmoghrabiContributors’ BiographiesIndexThis book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays and narratives that rethinks motherhood, kinship, and inheritance through non-Western, Indigenous, and diasporic perspectives.'Matrilineal Family Saga Beyond Western Modernity' is an interdisciplinary collection of essays and narratives that rethinks motherhood, kinship, and inheritance through non-Western, Indigenous, and diasporic perspectives. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from literature, history, film, psychology, autoethnography, autoarcheology, media studies, and sociology, the volume examines how matrilineal narratives reshape understandings of memory, endurance, and futurity beyond dominant Western frameworks. Through analytical essays, interviews, and personal testimonies, the book distinguishes motherhood as a lived, embodied practice from its institutional forms shaped by law, culture, and state power. It explores how caregiving is negotiated across migration, displacement, and evolving family structures, foregrounding the intimate and relational dimensions of care. The collection also considers the impact of contemporary technologies on mothering and care work, from digital activism to reproductive technologies and speculative storytelling. These developments are shown to expand and complicate women’s practices of care, agency, and rights in contemporary societies. By weaving together theory, testimony, and creative practice, Matrilineal Family Saga offers a decolonial reimagining of archives and knowledge production. It positions matrilineal storytelling as both method and intervention—one that challenges inherited epistemologies while opening space for alternative histories and futures shaped through women’s voices, relationality, and embodied experience.