Jessamine Chan’s Fascinating Fictional Mothers
By Jessamine Chan
My debut novel, The School for Good Mothers, tells the story of a Chinese-American single mom named Frida Liu who loses custody of her toddler and must spend a year at an imaginary government-run reform school in order to win her back. In creating Frida and her fellow mothers at the school, I wanted to challenge the idea that any mother can be judged as “good” or “bad” and show how each of us, in fiction and in life, deserves to be recognized for our full humanity. I like to imagine Frida in literary conversation with the mothers in these seven remarkable novels, all of whom are fierce, passionate, complicated, and wonderfully real.
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
I recently reread Tan’s classic novel for the first time in three decades. As a teenager, I’d latched onto the stories of the American-born daughters (my first time ever feeling seen by a book), but now, raising a daughter of my own, I was most moved by the mothers’ sacrifices and devotion. Reading about Suyuan, An-Mei, Lindo, and Ying-ying was a reminder that each of our mothers contain a thousand stories and that the whole of life experience—joy, hardship, tradition, and circumstance—shape our expressions of love.
The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings
In Giddings’ enthralling second novel, which takes place in a world where witches are real and female autonomy is considered the gravest danger to American society, Josephine Thomas is still haunted by the memory and mystery of her long-lost mother, who’s reputed to be a witch. I read this book last summer, right before Roe v. Wade was overturned, and it gave me a way to process all my rage and grief. I wish we could all be witches.
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook
As far as I’m concerned, today’s most exciting climate fiction is being written by Diane Cook. In her brilliant second book, set in a near future where climate change has rendered city life impossible, Bea takes her ailing daughter Agnes to live with a small group of volunteers in the Wilderness State in order to save her. I loved what Cook has to say about motherhood, survival, and our relationship with the natural world.
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
A harried and sleep-deprived toddler mom worries that she’s turning into a dog. Yoder’s book is just as funny and fascinating as this description suggests, as well as profound and deeply moving. This is the book I’ve recommended most often to fans of TSFGM. Read it before the sure-to-be-amazing film adaptation starring Amy Adams premieres on Hulu and let out your own private howl of recognition.
The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar
In Molnar’s riveting debut, our unnamed narrator, a translator and first-time mother, reckons with the transformation of her body and mind in the wild first days at home with her baby. I greatly admire Molnar’s lyrical, urgent articulation of what so often feels like an experience beyond language, and found this book both healing and radical.
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
Set in a near-future America where patriotism is enforced with family separations and book bans, among many other injustices, twelve-year-old Bird goes in search of his mother, Margaret, a Chinese-American poet and dissident, who seemingly abandoned their family when he was nine. With depictions of anti-Asian violence that echo the tragedies of the past few years as well as America’s long history of racial oppression, and an incredible portrayal of a mother who is both artist and activist, this book took my breath away.
More Than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez
Haven’t we all wondered about the other lives we might have lived? In Gutierrez’s haunting and suspenseful debut, Dolores “Lore” Rivera is married to one man (with whom she has twin sons) in Laredo, Texas, and another in Mexico City. After her double life is revealed, one husband murders the other. In the present-day, a young true-crime writer seeks to unravel the mystery. I was swept up by this book’s romance and intrigue and loved reading about a mother who wants more.
Jessamine Chan is the author of The School for Good Mothers, which was a New York Times bestseller, a Read with Jenna/TODAY Show Book Club pick, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Carnegie Medal, and one of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2022. She lives in Chicago with her family.
