The Maternal Complaint: Writing about the Reproduction of Life (and Death) in Katixa Agirre's Las madres no

ABSTRACT: This article analyzes Katixa Agirre's Las madres no through the lens of Lauren Berlant's concept of the female complaint to explore how the novel challenges dominant narratives surrounding motherhood. By tracing the story of a writer investigating a case of infanticide while navigating her own experience of new motherhood, the novel interrogates the intersections between maternal labor, artistic production, and institutional power. The dual narrative structure—combining the stories of the accused mother and the narrator—reveals how maternal experiences are shaped by legal, medical, and media discourses. The novel resists simplistic categorizations of "good" or "bad" mothers, instead presenting motherhood as a site of social contradiction, surveillance, and contested representation. Drawing on feminist theory and contemporary debates on care, reciprocity, and maternal labor, this article argues that Las madres no constructs a feminist poetics that redefines the boundaries of literature, maternity, and public discourse. In doing so, the novel expands the literary possibilities for narrating the unspeakable aspects of maternal life.