11 books about moms that redefine how we talk about motherhood
Literature is not always kind to moms.
Whether it's the trope of the "missing mom" or the frequency with which mothers are delegated to supporting roles in other protagonist's adventures, these important women in our lives have been sidelined and even neglected in many of pop culture's biggest stories.
Fortunately, that's not always true. Look carefully and you can find vivid, complex, and unforgettable portraits of moms. From passionate memoirs about family to heartbreaking tales about heritage, a plethora of books focus on untraditional stories of motherhood.
Here are 11 that are redefining how we talk about moms.
I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
Nadja Spiegelman
Nadja Spiegelman's book I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This is a nesting doll of a memoir — it's about Nadja's relationship with her mom, François Mouly (who is the art director of the New Yorker), and about Mouly's relationship with her mom, Josée, and about Josée's relationship with her mom, Mina. As the book dives into the moments that shaped each mother-daughter relationship, I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This paints a vivid portrait of family and motherhood, told generation by generation.
Little Fires Everywhere
Celeste Ng
On the surface, Little Fires Everywhere is about a small community in Ohio. But at the core of the book is the question of what it means to be a mother. This is modeled through four central characters: Mia, the single mother who balances her art career with raising her daughter, Pearl; Mrs. Richardson, the local journalist who seems to have the perfect family; Mrs. McCullough, who is in the process of adopting a baby; and Bebe, the mother who gave up that baby in a time of desperation and now wants her back. As these perspectives intersect, Little Fires Everywhere embarks on a necessary conversation about what it means to be a mom.
Boy, Snow, Bird
Helen Oyeyemi
Boy, Snow, Bird is a novel about the easily blurred lines between hero and villain. The book follows Boy, a young woman who runs away from her home in New York to a quiet neighborhood in Massachusetts. There, she meets Arturo (a local widower) and Snow (Arturo's daughter from a previous marriage). But when Boy has a child with Arturo — a girl they name Bird — she learns Arturo is a light-skinned black man who is passing as white. The result is a complicated story about family and relationships. The book is modeled loosely after Snow White. And, as the story develops, Boy realizes she might be less like the princess and more like the wicked stepmother.
Hausfrau
Jill Alexander Essbaum
There's a pop culture obsession with moms and housewives behaving badly (see also: Bravo's Real Housewives, ABC's Desperate Housewives, pretty much every soap opera ever created), but Jill Alexander Essbaum's 2015 novel, Hausfrau, is here to flip that trope on its head. The book follows Anna Benz, an American expat married to Swiss banker Bruno. Unsatisfied with her life and the illusion of motherly bliss, Anna begins a series of extramarital affairs. But rather than simply depicting naughty romps, Hausfrau uses these affairs, and the way Anna navigates them, to spark a haunting conversation about the pressures of family, love, and marriage.
Infinite Home
Kathleen Alcott
Kathleen Alcott's novel Infinite Home is a study in motherhood found in the most unexpected places. The book follows a widowed landlady named Edith and a collection of her tenants who all live in a Brooklyn brownstone. When Edith's estranged son Owen comes to take away Edith and sell the building, the tenants come together to protect their home and the untraditional family they have formed together.
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, To the Lighthouse, made waves in the literary world when it was published in 1927 because of its groundbreaking narrative style — Woolf tells of a family's trip to their vacation house through ping-ponging points of view, often without marking when you are leaving one person's head and entering another's. Though the book seems to frame the title lighthouse as the guiding beacon, the book's true light is Mrs. Ramsay, the family's matriarch who connects everyone (and hosts one of literature's most iconic dinner parties, to boot).
The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother
James McBride
There may not be a more complex person in all of literature than Ruth McBride, James McBride's mother and the central figure in his autobiography, The Color of Water. The book gives the personal history of Ruth, a woman born an Orthodox Jew in Poland in 1921 who began passing as a light-skinned Black woman after moving to the United States. McBride tells two tales: the incredible story of Ruth's life interspersed with details of his own — and the way Ruth's wisdom helped guide him from an impoverished childhood to his success as an adult.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
J.K. Rowling
Sure, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is about the boy wizard come to vanquish the Dark Lord and blah, blah, blah. But really, the most important thing about Deathly Hallows is Mrs. Weasley's primal scream to protect Ginny from Bellatrix: "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH"?! Throughout the series, we see Mrs. Weasley as a dedicated homemaker, but Deathly Hallows reveals her as a ferocious fighter, too.
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan
Emily X.R. Pan's novel The Astonishing Color of After is a beautiful story about family and grief, and at its center is a heart that beats with a resounding love toward mothers. The book opens with a young artist named Leigh learning that her mother has died by suicide. Soon after Leigh is visited by a mysterious red bird and begins having visions of the past — prompting an investigation into not only Leigh's relationship with her mom, but also her mom's complicated relationship with her family before Leigh was born. What stands out about The Astonishing Color of After is the lesson that even moms are hurting, sometimes.
Born A Crime
Trevor Noah
Born a Crime is comedian and Daily Show host Trevor Noah's essay collection about growing up as the son of a black Xhosa woman and a white Swiss man in South Africa during Apartheid. The book is framed as a memoir about Noah's experience growing up, and at the core of that is Noah's relationship with his own mother, who was forced to keep Noah a secret for much of his early childhood. The book is part coming-of-age story and part ode to a woman who went to extraordinary lengths to secure a better life for her son.
The Paper Menagerie
Ken Liu
Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie is a wildly inventive sci-fi story collection filled with gods, robots, a girl with an ice cube for a heart, and more. The title story, "The Paper Menagerie," contains an unforgettable and tragic tale of motherhood, told in just a few short pages. The story follows a young boy named Jack who is the son of a white dad and a Chinese immigrant mom. Jack's mom is able to fold complex origami animals and breathe life into them, but when a classmate makes fun of the creations, Jack casts aside his animal friends, and his Chinese heritage as well. When Jack's mom dies, he revisits these origami animals only to discover that his mom has been writing letters to him inside of the folded papers. And she has her own story to tell.
