in Books, Culture, Featured, inRetro
inRetro: How About Mothers and Sons?
Another look at Jada Bradley’s list of book featuring mothers and sons. Any you’d add?
For Mother’s Day, we often to see mother-daughter pairs highlighted, but we need to give a mother’s influence over her sons its proper due, so we are featuring a round-up of novels where a mother-son relationship is central to the plot.
If you can think of any other books about mothers and their sons that touched you in some way, please share them below, or use inReads chat to send your thoughts straight to Twitter.
Room by Emma Donohue
This widely acclaimed book is written from the point of view of a child who lives in captivity with his mother, a woman who manages to give him the world although they are confined to an eleven-by-eleven foot space.
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
In interviews and in an essay she wrote for The Guardian, Shriver has said that she wrote this book while questioning whether or not she wanted to have children. Some childless readers may also have doubts after finishing this epistolary novel about an ambivalent mother’s anguish over a son who goes on a killing spree at his high school.
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride
After years of being perplexed by his mother, a white woman who was vague about her racial origins, McBride was able to look back over her life and see her courage.
Black and Blue and Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
Black and Blue is about a mother who stays in an unhealthy marriage for the sake of her son until she decides to get out of the marriage for his sake.
In Every Last One, Quindlen writes lyrically about a woman coping with a family tragedy that takes her from being a wife and a mother of three to being the mother of one son.
To read what women writers have to say about raising their own sons, check out:
It’s a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons
Between Mothers and Sons: Women Writers Talk About Having Sons and Raising Men
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About The Author:
Jada.Bradley
Jada Bradley (jadabradley.com) is a Washington DC-based writer and educator who enjoys telling stories in formal and informal ways. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post and online. She holds Masters in Spanish Translation and is a great supporter of creative expression in the various forms it takes. She also writes about local cultural events as D.C. Cultural Events Examiner for Examiner.com. Her blog, In Other Words, can be found at inotherwordz.blogspot.com.
Jenn Lawrence posted on May 15, 2012
Spot-on recommendations. Having read them all myself, my personal favorite would have to be THE COLOR OF WATER. So profound.