Defying, producing, and overlooking stereotypes? The complexities of mobilizing "grandmotherhood" as political strategy.

This article explores the Canadian Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, a mobilization of older women responding to the effects of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on interviews, participant observation, and archival work, this article looks at how and to what effect "grandmotherhood," as discourse, was mobilized and deployed, in fluid and fractured ways, in order to increase members' credibility as global social justice actors and build their solidarity with African women. These mobilizations functioned to uphold essentialist notions of what being a grandmother means, while also challenging stereotypes of older women as frail and disengaged.