Abandonment & Slavery: Three Memoirs On A Mother’s Legacy

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In How to Be Unmothered: A Trinidadian Memoir, Camille U. Adams maps the fault lines between mother and child against the backdrop of Trinidad’s colonial violence and her family’s legacy of abandonment. Tormented by her mother’s presence and haunted by her absence, Adams presents an account of survival and self-determination, reimagining the meaning of escape, its cost, and what comes after. Sasha Bonét’s The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters is a meditation on Black motherhood. Bonét grew up far from the plantations that shaped her ancestors, yet each generation carried the legacy of Black motherhood rooted in slavery. Determined to interrupt this tradition, she seeks to create a way of mothering that honors that legacy but abandons the violence that shaped it.
Buy How to be Unmothered: A Memoir – Adams
Buy The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters – Bonét

Authors

CAMILLE U. ADAMS is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago. Her book How to Be Unmothered: A Trinidadian Memoir (Restless Books), was recognized as a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing in 2023. She earned her MFA in poetry from City College of New York and a doctoral degree in creative nonfiction from Florida State University. Honors for her work include Best of The Net: Nonfiction 2024, five nominations for the Pushcart Prize, three Best of the Net: Nonfiction nominations, and recognition for a notable essay in Best American Essays 2022. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including an inaugural Tin House Reading Fellowship.

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