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What Authors Helped You Understand Your Mother Better?
Dear Literary Lady,
What authors helped you understand your mother better? With Mother’s Day is coming up, I thought I’d ask.
–S.K., San Diego, CA
Dear S.K.,
My mom is definitely out there reading this and overanalyzing my answer. (Hi, Mom!) But this is a great question, and I’d love to put it out there for everyone else to ponder, too.
When it comes to understanding mothers, here’s a general trajectory: You begin your life believing moms are wise, benevolent beings who are in charge of the world. A couple years later, you realize moms are all different, because Lizzie’s mom lets her have cupcakes for breakfast and your mom definitely does not. Then you learn your mom was a child once, too, and that’s pretty mind-blowing to contemplate. After that, you realize your mom has a whole separate life while you’re at school and you know nothing about it. Then, when you’re a teenager, your mom is “OMG literally, like, the worst!” and she’s actively trying to ruin your social life (but she’s also secretly your best friend). In adulthood, you develop a deeper, more nuanced understanding of your mom’s experiences and you think, “Wow, Mom had it incredibly hard.” Then one day you realize you’re turning into your mother, and the cycle is complete.
Books have always been instrumental in moving me through each of these stages, but there are definitely certain writers who stand out:
Anne of Green Gables, 3-Book Box Set, Volume I (Anne of Avonlea/Anne of the Island/Anne of Green Gables)
L. M. Montgomery
5
Paperback
$17.97
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Lucy Maud Montgomery
Anne Shirley from the Anne of Green Gables series was the first character I ever watched grow from a child to a mother. It helped me realize my mother had a whole life before motherhood took over, one filled with best friends, daydreams, mistakes, and mischievous moments. My mom knew more about what it was like to be young than I ever gave her credit for.
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Erma Bombeck
I remember finding Bombeck’s books in our house when I was 12 and not knowing who they belonged to. Obviously they were my mother’s, but I hoarded them and kept reading them throughout my early teenage years. Bombeck provided insight into my mom’s sense of humor, and showed me that life as a housewife and a mom is full of absurd, frustrating, often thankless moments. More than that, Bombeck helped 14-year-old me realize what a ridiculous pain in the neck I was being to my mother.
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Alice Munro
I credit Alice Munro with enabling me to empathize with my mother in my adulthood. Her short stories are about the complexity of human relationships, and they often center on women in their domestic daily lives. I’ve read so many of Munro’s stories and come away thinking I’d glimpsed a bit of my mother’s emotional inner life. I now have a deeper understanding of my mom’s relationships with other people, and the situations she’s had to navigate as a woman of a different generation.
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Maxine Hong Kingston
Kingston’s novels gave me greater insight into my mother’s cultural background and the elements my mother hoped to instill in her Americanized children. I grew up with my mother’s elaborate retellings of Chinese folklore, mythology, and superstitions. Seeing them reiterated on the printed page in Kingston’s novels gave my mother’s words authenticity and validity. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe my mother, it was that I didn’t realize her tales were part of a larger cultural fabric and that it had deep historical significance until I read Kingston’s stories. Now I have a better understanding of why my mother tells these stories, and what they mean to my mother’s heritage and to my own.
What authors helped you understand your mother’s perspective better?
Love and paperbacks,
Literary Lady