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Every second Sunday in May, various countries celebrate mothers with heartfelt greeting cards, cheery bouquets, and coveted restaurant reservations. Motherhood—in real life, fictional, and nonfictional—looms so large, it clamors for an official celebration, but 24 hours seems like a mere snippet of time for a figure of such importance to so many.
A peek at the TBR titles on my book cart sings of my fascination with the subject of mothers—there’s All the Mothers by Domenica Ruta, The Blue Jay’s Dance by Louise Erdrich, and mother by m.s. RedCherries. In every reading nook: Janet Fitch’s White Oleander. And high on my to-buy list, So We Can Know, edited by Aracelis Girmay. Recently, I started the much-acclaimed memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me. From the first page, it describes the influence of Arundhati Roy’s mother with searing clarity: “taller in my mind than any billboard, more perilous than any river in spate, more relentless than the rain, more present than the sea itself.”
When it comes to mothers, a myriad of experiences exist, which call for a myriad of stories. In honor of Mother’s Day, I’ve collected five titles, beacons of mine gleaming with rainbows of sticky reading flags, for this literary celebration of mothers.
The Breaks: An Essay by Julietta Singh
In this tender letter to her 6-year-old, Singh ponders the climate crisis, the body, architecture, and race. Concerned with the state of things, the world her Brown daughter is inheriting, the author and her longtime “best friend” raise their child in a duplex. After settling on words that don’t quite fit and outgrowing and altering living spaces, Singh writes, “we are less preoccupied with capturing the theoretical form of our queer family than we are with existing in the felt rhythms of our lives unfolding.” The intimacy of this compelling book—drawing attention to parenthood’s infinite potential of supporting, being inspired, and forging important changes—grabbed me.
I’ll Tell You When I’m Home by Hala Alyan
From one of my favorite authors writing across genres, this poignant debut memoir reflects on daughters, longing, place, and the self. In the wake of years of miscarriages, Alyan submits her personal narrative to be paired with a surrogate. The author of Salt Houses pens, “I believe strongly that it takes a tribe to raise a child, and there’s nothing wrong with it taking a tribe to make one.” From “Preconception” to “Postpartum,” this yanked at my heartstrings. If this captivating work plucks your heartstrings, too, look to Alyan’s moving and most recent poetry collection, The Moon That Turns You Back.
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Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes by Jazmina Barrera, translated by Christina MacSweeney
From one of my auto-buy-anything-by-them authors, Barrera’s essay unfolds in lyrical musings separated by breaks. The creations—vignettes of black text strung together—bring to mind the titular linea nigra, making, blurring, and calendars. Barrera says, “I live in a place without time, in the realm of the mothers.” Compiled throughout the author’s pregnancy and postpartum, this includes four parts from “The Pregnant Image” to “The Tree of Our Flesh.” This incredible, compact book holds so much: Barrera’s experience alongside her mom’s, an abstract painter. It also ruminates on the representation of mothers in art and the 2017 Mexico City earthquake all while emanating ars poetica.
The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters by Sasha Bonét
Fellow fans of Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, check out Bonét’s stunning memoir. As I listened, in awe, to this beautiful exploration of Black womanhood, the Gulf Coast, healing, and water, my eyes yearned to touch the pages. How glad I was to revisit it in this way to see the “Matriarchal Tree,” the photographs, and the structure. Organized into three “Categor[ies],” this debut, especially the “Prelude,” includes some of the most glinting prose I’ve ever read: “I didn’t realize home is nowhere and somehow everywhere at once. Before learning new ways to love, the harm comes first. The harm flows naturally. Unless you become the bend in the river that turns just so, then breaks away, becoming a new body, still informed by those from which you derive.”
The Wilderness by Ayşegül Savaş
From Transit Books’ gorgeous “Undelivered Lectures” series, this meditative nonfiction debut chronicles the 40 days following the birth of Savaş’s child, “an important period in Turkish culture, considered one of extreme fragility for the mother and baby alike.” Through 40 poetic reflections recollected through notes and photographs, this delves into becoming, care, mythology, and transitions. The author of The Anthropologists (my first wondrous encounter with Savaş’s writing in which I fell hard) describes the initial postpartum days, “I have encountered another being, and have been torn apart. I am trying to put myself together, not sure how the pieces will fit back in.”