by Zibby Owens
Since I was failing my girls as a hairstylist, algebra teacher, and school supplies commissary, and my creative ability to work on my next novel has been zilch, I signed up for David Sedaris’s MasterClass. Now, when my daughters ask me for help on any subject, I can point to my screen, then my earbuds, and yell slowly, “I’m in class, too!” For a couple of kids, a middle-aged man sitting in a tweed upholstered chair fidgeting with his blazer lapels looks supremely boring, so they truly believe I, too, am on learning lockdown.
And actually, I am. In the first five minutes of my storytelling class, David Sedaris promises all things are funny, eventually. I want to believe him, but I can’t help wondering if a pandemic is a statistical outlier. A rogue data point. Will there ever be a time when the story of how coronavirus killed over 100,000 Americans1 and ushered in uncertainty, fear, and anxiety into every home around the globe becomes funny? And I mean “funny ha-ha,” not “funny now pass me another sleeve of shortbread Girl Scout cookies.” At the moment, it feels unfathomable.
David Sedaris promises all things are funny, eventually. I want to believe him, but I can’t help wondering if a pandemic is a statistical outlier.
I grieve for my life three months ago, loved ones I can’t see right now, a stable economy not a fragile one, and hopeful dreams not dashed ones. My focus ebbs and wanes; right now I can barely binge-watch anymore: I was fifteen minutes into a hydrating mask and Little Fires Everywhere and I somehow just lost my shit. It’s no small task to angry cry when your face is caked in dried mud.
But David (Mr. Sedaris feels too formal after staring at his mug for hours on end) provides some clear and actionable guidance. He offers an obvious tip for storytellers that’s often overlooked when the world is operating at full speed and the to-do list is long: be a great observer. When you purposefully observe life, compelling stories and acute details crawl up and settle into your lap. And then you are moved to write. And right now, after two months of creative paralysis, I need to get my ass in gear and get a sentence, any sentence, down. So, taking a page from my kids’ distance learning lessons and David’s instruction, I decide to give myself over to the purposefully observant way of life. As a thought experiment, I imagine I’m in a spring of witnessing and feeling, and I really start to pay attention to detail in this radically bizarre time.
When you purposefully observe life, compelling stories and acute details crawl up and settle into your lap.
I notice I have four open jars of cinnamon in the cabinet. I find a stash of Halloween candy far back in the closet of my husband’s office when I claimed to be “deep cleaning.” (All the Twix are now in my sock drawer.) I’m more aware than ever of my inherited runny nose that kicks in if I walk at a crisp clip from the parking lot to the produce aisle at the supermarket. (I’m the new Safeway social pariah.) Rolling the bottom of my feet over my kid’s lacrosse ball is kind of like a pedicure minus the paint job. Wearing Lycra in a pandemic for a month straight did me no favors when I finally put on jeans. Even with the time to weed, the desire still lags. And somehow every day feels like Sabbath, so I’ve ended up baking a lot of challah loaves.
Oddly, I’ve never loved my kids and my husband more—it’s wonderful. But I’m eager for the day they irritate me again like a low-grade eczema rash. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not too soon to laugh?
Alli Frank, with her coauthor Asha Youmans, is the author of the debut novel Tiny Imperfections.
1 Number at time of original publication.
Wait, Did I Kill My Book Club?
RACHEL LEVY LESSER
After I left, everything just fell apart.
I’m not sure how I got in. My friend started her book club almost a decade ago and hand-picked each member. She said she wanted to put together a group of interesting women who would actually read the books and come to meetings ready to discuss them and not just drink wine and talk about our kids and gossip. It was an honor to be nominated!
Being in a book club seemed very on brand for me. I’ve always loved to read going as far back as my childhood obsession with Ramona Quimby. I devoured most of the books I was assigned in high school and college literary classes, making notes in the margins with pencil to make it seem like I had some kind of insight if the teacher called on me.
At its height, our book club had ten members in total. Everyone who showed up to the meetings had in fact read the book and came prepared with thoughtful questions, unique opinions, and valid points that I hadn’t considered on my own. One time, a book club member couldn’t make it to the meeting in person so she called in with her notes and we listened to her on speakerphone. We had a few visiting authors come to meetings. We were legit.
Of course we drank wine and talked about our kids and gossiped. It was inevitable, even with the best of intentions. I never minded that part. I knew some of the women in the book club before we became a club and others I met because of it. One member, who I didn’t know before, became a close friend.
I discovered new authors and even a new genre (I think!) when we read The Wilder Life—about a woman retracing Laura Ingalls Wilder’s pioneer journey from the Little House on the Prairie days. We tackled a lot of historical fiction spanning most of the nineteenth and a big chunk of the twentieth centuries. We got stuck on World War II for a little longer than I would have liked, but nonetheless, we prevailed. We read memoirs and contemporary fiction, a bit of fantasy, and even some YA. I still think about several of the stories a decade later.
But six years into my book club tenure, I began to lag behind on finishing the books. Reading them started to feel less like something I wanted to do and more like something I had to do—kind of like getting through French in college, The English Patient in the movie theater, and geometry in tenth grade. I found myself staying up late to try and finish the books before our next meeting, but I wasn’t always successful. I skipped a couple times because I hadn’t done the reading.
Six years into my book club tenure, I began to lag behind on finishing the books. Reading them started to feel less like something I wanted to do and more like something I had to do.
With my own work deadline looming, my book club reading fell by the wayside. I felt guilty and then stressed out in a weird way which I hadn’t felt since being in school. I knew it was time for me to quit, but I really prided myself on not being a quitter.
I sent out a very non-me email to the other members quite bluntly saying that I would be leaving the book club. I gave no specific reason why, no excuses, no self-deprecating humor, and not even my usual smiley face emojis or xoxo signature. I heard back from a couple of people asking what was going on. Was I okay? What was the deal?
I gave my fellow book club members a laundry list of everything holding me back, which I fully recognized was annoying because we were all busy. It occurred to me then that reading books that other people assigned to me was not anywhere near the top of my want-to-do list. I wrote that I felt horrible about dropping out, that I knew I was so lame, but that I still wanted to stay in touch about the books they were reading and maybe I could even pop in on a meeting once in a while.
And then, the book club ended.
It never met again. Some said it died. Others said I killed it. It became a running joke among my friends and our spouses. I fully took the blame. Maybe the book club’s time had come. Maybe I did everyone a favor. Maybe everyone wanted out for a lot longer than I did. Maybe I was just being honest.
But four years later, I’m still reading. I’m reading what I want to read. These days, that seems to be memoir and contemporary fiction, but that could change. Sometimes I listen to audio books. Sometimes I don’t finish the book I started. Sometimes I just listen to an interview with an author on a podcast and call it a day.
It’s so incredibly freeing. It actually feels great.
Rachel Levy Lesser is the author of Life’s Accessories: A Memoir (and Fashion Guide) and several other books.
Ten Unforgettable Mother-Daughter Relatio
nships in Fiction
KELLY McWILLIAMS AND JEWELL PARKER RHODES
(According to two mother-daughter novelists.)
Far too often, mother characters in fiction are absent, dead, or Cinderella-stepmother cruel, because, let’s be honest: our culture privileges male wisdom. Patriarchy literally means that valuable goods, including stories and life lessons, mostly pass from father to son.
It’s telling that, even now, strong, positive mother-daughter relationships in fiction can be difficult to find. In compiling this list, we were surprised to find ourselves stymied: Didn’t Jane Austen write good mothers? Well, Mrs. Dashwood is okay, but Elizabeth Bennet’s mom is a ditz! What about Little Women? No, Mom, Mrs. March is too perfect to be believable, and everyone knows that one, anyway! Okay, fine. If you’re going to have an attitude, I’ll take the dogs out instead.
And so on.
(We never said our mother-daughter relationship wasn’t fraught!)
But, despite the lack of fictional portrayals, the vast majority of mothers shape their daughters for the better, passing on stories that hold the key to generational mysteries, and sometimes, the strength needed to survive. We’ve composed this list of books that illustrate mothers that do good—or at least try to—in a believable way. The selections include picture books (as a mother of a three-year-old, sometimes they are the only type of book Kelly has time for), middle-grade novels (gems that stick with you for a lifetime), young adult novels (we love them, enough said!), and a few general fiction selections. We also worked hard to find mothers of color in a landscape where the “perfect mother” is often extremely white.
Strong, positive mother- daughter relationships in fiction can be a difficult find.
This Mother’s Day, we hope you curl up with one of these gorgeous books. And pancakes. Because we wholeheartedly believe each and every mother should receive a healthy stack of homemade pancakes.
1. Saturday, Oge Mora
Kelly: I can’t remember how this book came into my life, but I’m so glad it did. First of all, the mother portrayed in the stunning mixed-media illustrations isn’t white, or thin, or unbelievable in her perfection. She’s a regular-sized woman of color trying her best to spend her single day off—Saturday—with her young daughter. As a mother who stays home half-days, it was really interesting to explain to my own daughter that staying home is a privilege, not a right. She’s only three, but this is an ongoing conversation we’re going to have. Not all mothers get to spend as much time with their daughters as they’d like, and that’s something we’ve got to change. The book is also poignant because, with everything riding on this one day, the mother completely falls apart at the end. Her daughter reminds her: “The day doesn’t have to be perfect. We just have to spend it together.”
2. One Crazy Summer, Rita Williams Garcia
Jewell: One Crazy Summer is a terrific book about a less-than-perfect mother-daughter relationship. After being abandoned by her mother, Delphine gains insight into her mother’s artistic life and learns that her mother was also abandoned at an early age. It sends the message that it’s never too late for mothers and daughters to repair their relationship—which I love.
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison
Kelly: Read this book before you’re a mom, then read it again after and, lo and behold, it is not the same book! Beloved devastated me (think: flattened by a semitruck) when I finally reread it this year, as a mother. Because the hard truth is motherhood depends to a ferocious extent on social context. It is crucial that we remember the sacrifices that mothers were forced to make during times of slavery and Reconstruction, and it is also crucial to compare and make connections to all sorts of hardships that we still face in present day. Moms will feel Beloved in their core.
We worked hard to find mothers of color in a landscape where the “perfect mother” is often extremely white.
4. A Big Mooncake for Little Star, Grace Lin
Jewell: I received an early galley of this sweet, beautiful picture book, and I immediately sent it to my daughter and granddaughter! In the story, Little Star and her mother bake a mooncake and set it “in the sky to cool.” Sweet Little Star can’t help but sneak out of bed to take a nibble—night after night. Soon enough, and like the moon itself, the mooncake is gone. I love that Lin’s story paints the mother-daughter relationship, so often minimized and maligned, on a cosmic scale.
5. Our Bodies, Ourselves, Judy Norsigan
Jewell: Curveball! This book isn’t fiction, but it contains the stories of so many women, told in their own voices, that it almost reads like it at times. Our Bodies, Ourselves was a revolutionary book when I was a teenager because it dared to address sexuality and coming-of-age from a woman’s perspective. I felt honored to be able to share it with my daughter.
6. When You Know What I Know, Sonja Solter
Kelly: This middle grade novel-in-verse tells a devastating but important story about child sexual abuse. After the protagonist, Tori, is abused, she tells her mom what has happened, and her mother doesn’t believe her, at least not at first. After her mother makes peace with the unimaginable, she becomes a powerful advocate for her daughter, and the two repair their relationship in one of the most moving scenes I’ve ever read in a fiction piece. As a mother myself, I recognized the mother’s mistakes and found them tragically relatable. It’s a true work of art, and, despite the heavy topic, a joy to read.
7. Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan
Jewell: Pride and Prejudice set in Singapore? Yes, please!
Kelly: Right? My favorite thing about this book (and now also a movie) is that it pays such close attention to the relationship between Rachel and the mother figures in her life: her sharp-tongued mother-in-law, whom she can’t possibly impress, and her own mother, who comes to the rescue when all is lost. By the way, Jewell, I think you came to my rescue after a breakup once or twice.
Jewell: I don’t remember that.
Kelly: You did!
Jewell: If you say so . . .
Kelly: Unbelievable.
8. Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
Kelly: Speaking of retellings, Ella Enchanted tackles Cinderella in a way that really stuck with me. In the opening of this book, Ella is cursed by a silly fairy (who thinks she’s blessing her) to always be obedient. But of course, obedience taken too literally can be a horror.
Jewell: I always tried to teach you to think for yourself.
Kelly: In Levine’s book, Ella’s mother, though she doesn’t live long, finds clever ways to teach Ella how to disobey. It’s powerful, because in our society female obedience is so highly prized. And yet, our mothers have the power to tell us not to give an eff—
Jewell: They won’t print this if you curse.
Kelly: —about the rules. The way I see it, our job as mothers of daughters is to help them to be as disobedient as possible, while still staying safe.
Jewell: It’s like the cultural obsession over thinness. I think it was Naomi Wolf who pointed out that it’s about obedience more than it is about appearance.
9. In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose, Alice Walker
Jewell: I didn’t know black women wrote books until I was in junior college. As I was struggling to find my voice as a writer of color, this essay collection became a healing balm. The marvelous Alice Walker went in search of other black women writers (unfairly obscured by history) and rediscovered Zora Neale Hurston. It demonstrates that our “mothers” on this earth aren’t just biological. Our cultural forbearers matter just as much. Where would we be without Zora? Or Alice, for that matter?
10. Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler
Kelly: Growing up, I was a nerd.
Jewell: Yep.
Kelly: I loved science fiction. And I remember asking you, do black people even write science fiction? Because, if so, where the heck is it?
Jewell: In response to that nonsense, I said two words: Octavia. Butler. (Also, shortly after, many other words, because lo
ts of black folks have been writing science fiction for a very long time. It’s just not as famous as it ought to be!)
Kelly: Amen. Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower changed my life. I consider it directly responsible for my novel coming out this summer. Parable of the Talents, the sequel to Parable of the Sower, is narrated by a daughter who feels neglected by and in awe of her professor/author mother. And I have to say, it really spoke to me!
Jewell: Though I am a professor, I never neglected you, obviously.
Kelly: Of course not. But I always knew you always had other things going on in your life. And as a mom, so do I! It can be tricky to navigate multiple creations. As a portrait of working motherhood, of artistic motherhood, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
Jewell: Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!
Kelly: Happy Mother’s Day!
Jewell Parker Rhodes is the New York Times bestselling author of, most recently, Black Brother, Black Brother.
Kelly McWilliams is Jewell’s daughter, the mother of a toddler, and the author of Agnes at the End of the World.
Why Moms Really Join Book Clubs
ASHLEY PRENTICE NORTON
It’s common knowledge among women that a book club only comes into its own after everyone stops reading the book. When this happens, there will still be the ritual of picking a selection for the next month. Going to the corner bookstore to buy it, putting it on the top of the stack of books that anchor a bedside table. There will still be the rotation of apartments or houses, the salted or savory offerings depending on who’s hosting, and the pairs of shoes abandoned in the entryway.
But despite retaining all of the standard book club guidelines, when women emancipate themselves from actually reading the book, it’s a brave new world. Now the discussion can wander, and it does. Not scattered and jittery like YouTube, but a steady looking for realness, depth: like water flowing into the cracks between rocks. Once the purses are settled in the hallway, tucked into chairs and sofas, the talking starts. The group is now deeply connected, a sharing of truths, which might only otherwise occur in the context of family, or a therapist’s office. Even though they all still love books, adore reading, this gathering now provides a vitality most didn’t even know was missing from their lives. They no longer want a Girls Night Out with matchstick umbrellas poking into blended drinks, shots with tacky names, packs of boys who all want the girl with the best body. They want a Girls Night In.
