Reviews

The Other Mother is laced with an overarching theme of doing what is right to protect someone, even if that protection is self-preservation.

The poems in Catastrophic Molting acknowledge our anger while challenging readers to hope for and work for change.

In Mothercare, Tillman shares truths as she sees them, and the result is a sometimes-gritty read that offers advice and resonance for adult children caring for an ailing parent.

Readers will see in this book how love is investigated, embraced, and exuded through Christman’s grief, trauma, marriage, and parenting. 

The lesson, if there is one, might be that there is no certainty in life, only a series of ambiguous maybes.

Seeing her child for who she is, born male but identifying as female, and protecting this girlhood becomes a sacred part of Hays’s mission as a mother. 

Sometimes tender, sometimes exuding attitude, Hines’s poems focus on people—in a moment, at an age—and get them right.

This memoir covers many topics: disability, the differences between po and poor, strong Puerto Rican mothering, your ride-and-die gals, step-parenting, single motherhood, addiction, and the healing power of burlesque.

Owens’s journey explores how she handled universal struggles and finally found her voice to create an award-winning podcast and a relatable book that tackles relationships, love, food issues, the writing life, and finding one’s true calling. 

Essential Labor underscores the reality of an American society in which production and efficiency are king, with caregiving devalued on a massive scale.

For our Literary Mama crowd, this is a compelling narrative about how we come to define and understand mothers.