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A review by knightreader1988
What We Carry by Maya Shanbhag Lang
5.0
Maya Lang’s memoir, WHAT WE CARRY is the mother daughter story we all need to read. Beyond being a story of Lang and her mother, we see a family dealing with Alzeihmers and it’s realities. A daughter sees her strong, independent and reliable mother turn into a shadow of her former self. Lang longs for what is being lost, and comes to face the fact that the person she once knew may never return.
The memoir is a vulnerable, honest and heartbreaking one. It made me think about my own mom. It made me think about all those patients and families dealing with Alzeihmers. It made me appreciate things. It is a book that will tug on your heartstrings and make you value memory, time and maintenance of self.
I am not the biggest fan of memoirs, but I thoroughly enjoyed Lang sharing her and her mom’s story with the world. Lang highlights the struggle of being a woman, a daughter, a mother and the pressures and expectations that come with it. Lang’s mother is a strong, immigrant woman who made strides for herself and her daughter in the USA as a physician. Using this template and her own life, Lang chronicles the sacrifices and choices she and her mom had/have to make to be good mothers. Unknowingly, Lang’s mother has already armed her for motherhood even before her Alzeihmers starts to overwhelm her. But Lang concludes that “Maybe at our most maternal, we aren’t mothers at all. We’re daughters, reaching back in time for the mothers we wish we’d had and then finding ourselves.”
Another topic dealt with quite well here is that of post partum depression. It is the starting point of Lang’s overt need to be saved by her mother but it ends up being the event in her life that unmasks the fact that her mother can no longer save her, as she herself is slipping away.
Lang has given us the privilege of reading a love letter to her mother. That is essentially what this is. Lang shows us her struggles to swim to shore and the relief in finding some sort of respite there. There is nothing groundbreaking here but in beautiful prose and simple recollections you will definitely find something of value. Add it to your TBR.
The memoir is a vulnerable, honest and heartbreaking one. It made me think about my own mom. It made me think about all those patients and families dealing with Alzeihmers. It made me appreciate things. It is a book that will tug on your heartstrings and make you value memory, time and maintenance of self.
I am not the biggest fan of memoirs, but I thoroughly enjoyed Lang sharing her and her mom’s story with the world. Lang highlights the struggle of being a woman, a daughter, a mother and the pressures and expectations that come with it. Lang’s mother is a strong, immigrant woman who made strides for herself and her daughter in the USA as a physician. Using this template and her own life, Lang chronicles the sacrifices and choices she and her mom had/have to make to be good mothers. Unknowingly, Lang’s mother has already armed her for motherhood even before her Alzeihmers starts to overwhelm her. But Lang concludes that “Maybe at our most maternal, we aren’t mothers at all. We’re daughters, reaching back in time for the mothers we wish we’d had and then finding ourselves.”
Another topic dealt with quite well here is that of post partum depression. It is the starting point of Lang’s overt need to be saved by her mother but it ends up being the event in her life that unmasks the fact that her mother can no longer save her, as she herself is slipping away.
Lang has given us the privilege of reading a love letter to her mother. That is essentially what this is. Lang shows us her struggles to swim to shore and the relief in finding some sort of respite there. There is nothing groundbreaking here but in beautiful prose and simple recollections you will definitely find something of value. Add it to your TBR.