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4.4 AVERAGE
4.4 AVERAGE
A beautiful, moving memoir about mothers and daughters and the things we do for one another.
Heartbreaking memoir about the complicated relationship between a mother and daughter. It also deals with a heavy subject, how to grieve the loss of your loved one to Alzheimer's, with such love.
“‘We must not judge,’ my mom continued. ‘That is the real lesson of the story. Whatever a woman decides, it is not easy.’”
This memoir is beautiful, tragic, painful, real and incredible. What would you do if your parent could no longer care for themselves? There's no wrong answer to this question but watching Maya bring her aging mother into her home, upend her life and care for her was beautiful. A testament to the love daughters so often have for their mothers in spite of fights and rifts.
This memoir speaks to the power of secrets, to the damage they can so easily cause. It speaks to the way we interact with our families, the ways we build off of how our parents raised us to do better with our own babies.
I highly recommend this memoir....I also recommend keeping tissues handy and if you're close with your Mom, preparing to have a sobbing phone call or text exchange because this memoir will make you need to call her.
This memoir is beautiful, tragic, painful, real and incredible. What would you do if your parent could no longer care for themselves? There's no wrong answer to this question but watching Maya bring her aging mother into her home, upend her life and care for her was beautiful. A testament to the love daughters so often have for their mothers in spite of fights and rifts.
This memoir speaks to the power of secrets, to the damage they can so easily cause. It speaks to the way we interact with our families, the ways we build off of how our parents raised us to do better with our own babies.
I highly recommend this memoir....I also recommend keeping tissues handy and if you're close with your Mom, preparing to have a sobbing phone call or text exchange because this memoir will make you need to call her.
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Dementia, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship
This is one of the most beautifully written memoirs. Maya gracefully captures the dynamics of her relationship with her mother. Not only is her writing vulnerable, she also captures the grayness in parental relationship in an unabridged, raw format.
“Maybe at our most maternal we aren't mothers at all. We are daughters reaching back in time for the mothers we wish we'd had, and then finding ourselves.”
“Maybe at our most maternal we aren't mothers at all. We are daughters reaching back in time for the mothers we wish we'd had, and then finding ourselves.”
Once I started getting into this book, I couldn’t put it down. I was so enthralled by the woman in the river and the significance of it to the author throughout the whole story. Her dynamic with her immigrant mom resonated so much to me. I loved seeing the authors journey healing from her less than ideal upbringing as well as when she finally came to terms with choosing herself. This book was hands down worth the read!
Saw her give a virtual book talk, and not only loved her themes (motherhood, caregiving, and storytelling), but the way she explored them and expressed them. The book is a testimony to how children give their parents a story and then, as adults, learn how much they got wrong. Those of us who become parents then have to wonder what we are presenting to our children. This memoir does a beautiful job of leading us on the journey of uncovering and consciously creating family history. With very short chapters, it's an easy book to read (and proved very hard to put down -- I read it in the space of a day.)
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced