THE ESSAYS IN PART II discuss some of the unexpected challenges and unanticipated revelations mothers in academia have encountered. These unexpected circumstances include cultural relocation and acculturation; terminal illness; overt and covert forms of racism, sexism, and classism; and the encounter with a deeper understanding of how motherhood creates moments of enlightenment and power. We begin this part with Vanessa Adel’s essay “Four Kids and a Dissertation: Queering the Balance Between Family and Academia,” which deals with family dynamics and an ethics of care as she deliberates the politics of transracial adoption. As part of a lesbian couple, Vanessa shares in her story the juxtaposition of being an unremitting graduate student with doing intensive reproductive labor in a racially segregated society. Susana L. Gallardo similarly discusses the corporeal experience of mothering in “‘Tía María de la Maternity Leave’: Reflections on Race, Class, and the Natural-Birth Experience.” Her essay examines the politics of natural birth from a Chicana feminist perspective by offering reflections on her own pregnancy and birth narrative as a forty-two-year-old first-time mom. She interrogates how the birth process and motherhood are political acts, particularly for women of color and unmarried women, and seeks to deconstruct the popular narrative of natural birth as individual privilege and to reexamine it as a “raced” and “classed” reproductive right that is overmedicalized by the medical establishment. “Threads That Bind: A Testimonio to Puerto Rican Working Mothers” by Maura I. Toro-Morn explores the inclusion of Latinas/os intellectuals in American universities in a moment of increased corporatization and rising demands for more campus diversity. In that context, motherhood for Maura has meant trying to balance the growing workload in higher education with the challenges of raising a bicultural, bilingual son and the struggles of maintaining a transnational family. The intersections of race, class, and gender are also present in Olivia Perlow’s essay “Parenting Within the Nexus of Race, Class, and Gender Oppression in Graduate School at a Historically Black College/University.” She discusses how she developed strategies to help her overcome the structural, cultural, and institutional barriers that challenged her ability to balance academic life and family life successfully. Yet she concludes that although individual determination is important, more institutional support is needed for student mothers to thrive. On the topic of support, in “Sobreviviendo (and Thriving) in the Academy: My Tías’ Counterconsejos and Advice,” J. Estrella Torrez weaves personal motherhood and activist narratives with critical interventions into academic perceptions of motherhood and “motherwork.” She contends that Chicanas in the academia do not need to sacrifice raising families for a “successful” career in the academy. Our second section concludes with Allia A. Matta’s chapter, “Revolving Doors: Mother-Woman Rhythms in Academic Spaces,” where Matta shares her experience of returning to school at forty-two years old. She left job security, a rent-stabilized New York City apartment, and her sons to pursue her doctorate, a move many thought was not in her family’s best interest. As an African American nontraditional graduate student, Allia contemplates how race, class, gender, and community are woven together and the ways in which the politics of mothering alter life-changing possibilities.