What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence

by Michele Filgate Narrated by Michele Filgate, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Cynthia Farrell, David Sadzin, Emily Ellet, Janina Edwards, Keong Sim, Roger Casey, Soneela Nankani, Various Narrators

Overview

“You will devour these beautifully written-and very important-tales of honesty, pain, and resilience” (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls) from fifteen brilliant writers who explore how what we don't talk about with our mothers affects us, for better or for worse.

As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. This gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers.

Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer's hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn't interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything.

As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that's why we're always trying to return to them.” There's relief in acknowledging how what we couldn't say for so long is a way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves.

Contributions by Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

These essays, each one exceptional on its own, encompass both love and writing at their most vulnerable, and could power entire cities with their electricity.”—Booklist, starred review


"Fifteen essayists—many luminaries—write unflinchingly about their mothers...Each one of these intimate and gut-wrenching essays reaches beyond itself to forge connections with readers."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"The essays all address the authors' relationships with their mothers in stories to be savored but not necessarily read in one sitting. ...beautifully composed."—Library Journal, starred review

"A fascinating set of reflections on what it is like to be a son or daughter... the range of stories and styles represented in this collection makes for rich and rewarding reading."—Publishers Weekly


"These are the hardest stories in the world to tell, but they are told with absolute grace. You will devour these beautifully written—and very important— tales of honesty, pain, and resilience.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love

"By turns raw, tender, bold and wise, the essays in this anthology explore writers’ relationships with their mothers. Kudos to Michele Filgate for this riveting contribution to a vital conversation.”—Claire Messud, bestselling author of The Burning Girl

"Fifteen literary luminaries, including Filgate herself, probe how silence is never even remotely golden until it is mined for the haunting truths that lie within our most primal relationships-with our mothers. Unsettling, brave, sometimes hilarious and sometimes scorching enough to wreck your heart, these essays, about love or the terrifying lack of it, don’t just smash the silence; they let the light in, bearing witness with grace, understanding and writing so gorgeous you’ll be memorizing lines."--Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You

“This collection of storytelling constellated around mothers and silence will break your heart and then gently give it back to you stitched together with what we carry in our bodies our whole lives.”—Lidia Yuknavitch, national bestselling author of The Misfit's Manifesto

"This is a rare collection that has the power to break silences. I am in awe of the talent Filgate has assembled here; each of these fifteen heavyweight writers offer a truly profound argument for why words matter, and why unspoken words may matter even more."—Garrard Conley, New York Times bestselling author of Boy Erased

"Who better to discuss one of our greatest shared surrialities — that we are all, once and forever, for better or worse, someone's child — than this murderer's row of writers? The mothers in this collection are terrible, wonderful, flawed, human, tragic, triumphant, complex, simple, baffling, supportive, deranged, heartbreaking and heartbroken. Sometimes all at once. I'll be thinking about this book, and stewing over it, and teaching from it, for a long time."—Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers

Rebecca Makkai

"Who better to discuss one of our greatest shared surrialities — that we are all, once and forever, for better or worse, someone's child — than this murderer's row of writers? The mothers in this collection are terrible, wonderful, flawed, human, tragic, triumphant, complex, simple, baffling, supportive, deranged, heartbreaking and heartbroken. Sometimes all at once. I'll be thinking about this book, and stewing over it, and teaching from it, for a long time."

Garrad Conley

"This is a rare collection that has the power to break silences. I am in awe of the talent Filgate has assembled here; each of these fifteen heavyweight writers offer a truly profound argument for why words matter, and why unspoken words may matter even more."

Lidia Yuknavitch

This collection of storytelling constellated around mothers and silence will break your heart and then gently give it back to you stitched together with what we carry in our bodies our whole lives.

Caroline Leavitt

"Fifteen literary luminaries, including Filgate herself, probe how silence is never even remotely golden until it is mined for the haunting truths that lie within our most primal relationships-with our mothers. Unsettling, brave, sometimes hilarious and sometimes scorching enough to wreck your heart, these essays, about love or the terrifying lack of it, don’t just smash the silence; they let the light in, bearing witness with grace, understanding and writing so gorgeous you’ll be memorizing lines."

Claire Messud

"By turns raw, tender, bold and wise, the essays in this anthology explore writers’ relationships with their mothers. Kudos to Michele Filgate for this riveting contribution to a vital conversation.

Elizabeth Gilbert

"These are the hardest stories in the world to tell, but they are told with absolute grace. You will devour these beautifully written—and very important— tales of honesty, pain, and resilience.”

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2019-03-17
Fifteen essayists—many luminaries—write unflinchingly about their mothers.

From the first page of the introduction, where editor Filgate—an MFA student at NYU and contributing editor at Literary Hub—names cooking as a way of staying connected to the mother she doesn't talk to very often, this collection is honest and riveting. Kiese Laymon writes about the difference between loving someone and loving how that someone makes you feel, while Carmen Maria Machado explores how her feelings about the mother from whom she's estranged shape her thoughts about having, or not having, children herself. In her sharp contribution, Lynn Steger Strong considers what she cannot find a way to say about the anger she feels toward her mother. Julianna Baggott describes being her mother's "confessor." André Aciman's ruminations about his mother's deafness also serve as odes to language and bodies and communication. Brandon Taylor illuminates the experience of cancer and examines his lack of empathy for his mother, and Leslie Jamison rounds out the collection with a loving piece in which she attempts to "project my admiration back through time to reassure the woman my mom had been, that woman who felt only that she had somehow failed the man who loved her first—that women who did not know, could not have known, the road ahead." Most of the essays are pointedly literary and lyrical; many include meta-reflections on the nature of truth-telling, and the narrators show themselves thinking and rethinking the claims they hazard and then revise about their mothers. For the most part, the collection avoids cliché and sentimentality; equally remarkable, each one of these intimate and gut-wrenching essays reaches beyond itself to forge connections with readers. Other contributors include Alexander Chee, Melissa Febos, and Sari Botton.

Moving Mother's Day reading for the fearless and brave—though some readers may want to have their therapist on speed-dial.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170457403
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	04/30/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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