Motherhood is often portrayed as a magical, fulfilling experience fuelled by unconditional love, one that allows you to grow as a woman. It is a beautiful branch of the tree of life, a natural process that has brought inner peace to women throughout time. Yet the majority of mothers will tell you that although those things are mostly true, and motherhood does include all those lovely feelings, it can also be messy, unpredictable, and emotionally detrimental.
In honour of Mother’s Day, here are three books which approach the theme of motherhood through an unconventional lens:
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, by Angie Cruz
This novel is set in New York during the recession and tells the story of Cara Romero, a Dominican immigrant in her mid-50s who, after losing her job, joins a work-search programme where she is matched with a job counsellor. The novel is split into twelve chapters, or twelve ‘sessions’. Each chapter is told from a first-person perspective as a one-sided conversation during meetings with Cara’s job coach. The conversational, almost confessional tone creates a sense of intimacy and closeness as Cara unpacks her life story to the reader.
Cara is at times an unreliable narrator, especially as she slowly reveals the real reason why her now grown-up son wants nothing to do with her. I appreciated the use of an imperfect narrator, as I find it highlights the fact that mothers are not perfect, nor should they be expected to be. Mothers can make mistakes; they can mess up. Cara’s transformative personal growth as the story progresses shows the importance of admitting when you’re wrong as a mother, and how this can be a strength rather than a weakness.
The novel dissects a wide range of heavy topics, from poverty and gentrification to homophobia within traditional communities, all whilst using a casual, light-hearted voice filled with warmth and humour. As Cara puts it, “to be a mother is to suffer”, but her character is a testament to the joys that can be found despite the suffering.
Territories of Light, by Yuko Tsushima
A short yet extremely intense read, this translated novel was originally published in twelve parts in a Japanese literary monthly magazine between 1978 and 1979. The novel is a one-year snapshot of a single mother’s life as she moves into her first apartment after the breakdown of her relationship and navigates raising a toddler by herself whilst juggling full-time work. The protagonist remains unnamed, which emphasises her isolation as a woman struggling in a patriarchal society.
The whole book kind of feels like a fever dream – there are lots of references to dreams and nightmares, as well as a certain lyrical quality to the writing, as the protagonist focuses heavily on imagery of light and shadows, which makes it all the more dreamlike. As a single mother myself, I happened to read this book whilst also going through a period of stress and figuring out how I was supposed to do this alone after a messy breakup. The dream-like, transient nature of the writing was reminiscent of feelings of dissociation during stress, and you can see this in the way the protagonist sometimes appears to just be going through the motions in a trance-like state.
There are moments that are deeply uncomfortable to read, perhaps reflecting the differences in parenting in the 70s compared to now, though I think these moments are crucial to the story as they reflect the reality of mothers trying to keep sane whilst under huge amounts of pressure and stress. Tsushima has a poetic way of writing which truly conveys the extreme highs and lows (or light and shadows) that come with motherhood, especially the reality of being a single, working mother. I especially enjoyed the way she highlights the sweetness of the little moments, and how the stress and low points are so worth it for the reward of witnessing your child’s joy: as the protagonist says whilst observing her daughter’s delight at the sunlight pouring into their new home, “I felt like giving myself a pat on the head for having managed to protect my daughter from the upheaval around her with the quantity of light.”
Please Look After Mother, by Kyong-sook Shin
Another translated work, this time from Korean. Please Look After Mother tells the story of an elderly woman who becomes separated from her husband at a busy train station in Seoul and subsequently disappears. The novel switches from her daughters’, son’s, and husband’s perspectives in the months that follow as they search for her, revealing a web of intricacies about her life which none of them had encountered before. They realise that she was severely ill, in the early stages of dementia, but the whole family had been so caught up in their own lives that they didn’t notice that something was wrong.
The novel focuses on the underappreciation of a mother’s hard work and labour, as well as the sacrifices which often go unnoticed. The reader feels a great deal of sympathy towards So-nyo (Mother), and a sense of exasperation at her children’s and husband’s selfishness. The most likeable of her children, in my opinion, is the daughter who has children herself, as she is the most empathetic towards her own mother due to realising first-hand the struggles of motherhood – a feeling I also experienced when becoming a mother.
So-nyo’s daughter says, “To you, Mother was always Mother. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mother was Mother,” and, “Why did I never give a thought to Mother’s dream?”
I found that the story serves as a reminder not to lose yourself in motherhood. Don’t give up your hopes and dreams and work yourself to the bone, because one day it will all add up and you will explode from the stress of it all – explode and disappear.
