Essays on motherhood, care, class, grief and community by one of the sharpest cultural critics writing in Welsh today.

Roughly translated as ‘We Can’t, Can We’, this is a pair of essays from one of Wales’s most defiant counter-cultural voices writing today. In the first essay, they examine motherhood, their experience of being an ‘angry mother’, and how mental health, class, and the breakdown of communal structures robs mothers of the chance to be the sort of mothers they dream of being. Criafol posits new modes of care, while painting a stark picture of conditions faced by working class mothers, and those who provide care in or around mental illness.

The sister essay, written with and towards a Kurdish family member in the aftermath of the 2023 earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria, also addresses modes of care, this time in the context of grief. Living in south Wales, the family live through the aftermath of the earthquake from a geographic distance, even while its impact is immediate and devastatingly close. Criafol examines the complexities of bereavement across borders, of the role of community in grief and care work. They also reflect critically on the racist Euro- centric responses of Westerners to tragedies and atrocities that occur outside Europe and the West.