Motherhood Memoir

Kelly Oxford is a wunderkind producer of pirated stage productions for 6-year-olds, a underage schnitzel-house dishwasher, the kid who stood up to a bully and almost passed out from the resulting adrenaline rush, and more.

In Mother to Son, Jasmine Holmes shares a series of powerful letters to her young son. These are about her journey as an African American Christian and what she wants her son to know as he grows and approaches the world as a Black man. Holmes deals head-on with issues ranging from discipleship and marriage to biblical justice. She invites us to listen as she reminds Wynn that his identity is firmly planted in the person and work of Jesus Christ, even when the topic is one as emotionally charged as race in America.

Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, unforgiving Italian town north of Boston where in the seventeenth century women were hanged as witches. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious figure in this hardscrabble place, was a drug addict and sometime dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, whose highbrow taste was at odds with her base appetites.

A bicultural child of a Malay mother and an Indian father, Amelia Zachry was different from the get-go, never quite fitting in. In this raw, inspiring memoir, she chronicles the long, winding journey that brought her from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Kentucky, USA the place she and her family now call home.

Jenny Mollen is a writer and actress living in New York. Until two years ago, her life was exciting, sexy, a little eccentric, and 100 percent impulsive. She had a husband who embraced her crazy - who understood her need to occasionally stalk around the house in his ex-girlfriend's old beach caftans and to invite their drug dealer to Passover seder (so he wouldn't feel like they were using him only for drugs). Then they had their son, Sid, and overnight Jenny was forced to grow up: to be responsible, to brush her hair, to listen to her voice mail.

Mothering under normal circumstances takes all you have to give. But what happens when your child is disabled, and sacrificing all you've got and more is the only hope for a decent future? Full of rage and resilience, duty and love, Ashley Bristowe delivers a mother's voice like no other we've heard.

Disillusioned with overly competitive organized sports and concerned about her lively daughter’s growing shyness, author Angie Abdou sets herself a challenge: to hike a peak a week over the summer holidays with Katie. They will bond in nature and discover the glories of outdoor activity. What could go wrong? Well, among other things, it turns out that Angie loves hiking but Katie doesn’t. Hilarious, poignant, and deeply felt, This One Wild Life explores parenting and marriage in a summer of unexpected outcomes and growth for both mother and daughter.

This is the story of an independent woman who is a model for our time—photographer Toby Molenaar. It begins in Holland during World War II, when her country is decimated by the occupying German army and she is literally left to starve. As a little girl, she learns to be self-sufficient—survival is the order of the day. Courage, indomitable spirit, an open mind, and accountability only to herself are the stuff of this fascinating and inspirational story.

From her beginnings as an early blogger, Ree Drummond has become a household name with a passionate following of devoted fans. On her blog, in her magazine, and on her cooking show, Ree shares recipes, tales of her adventures in the country, and stories of everyday life with her four children and cowboy/rancher husband.

Judy Batalion grew up in a house filled with endless piles of junk and layers of crumbs and dust; suffocated by tuna fish cans, old papers and magazines, swivel chairs, tea bags, clocks, cameras, printers, VHS tapes, ballpoint pens - obsessively gathered and stored by her hoarder mother. The first chance she had, she escaped the clutter to create a new identity - one made of order, regimen, and clean white walls. Until, one day, she found herself enmeshed in life's biggest chaos: motherhood.

Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them. In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America's most pivotal heroes.

A wide range of women—actors, athletes, academics, CEOs, writers, small-business owners, birth workers, physicians, and activists—share their experiences of becoming mothers in this multifaceted, moving, and revealing collection.

In this irresistible memoir, the New York Times best-selling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Anna Quindlen writes about looking back and ahead - and celebrating it all - as she considers marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, faith, loss, all the stuff in our closets, and more. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is filled with the sharp insights and revealing observations that have long confirmed Quindlen’s status as America’s laureate of real life.

Facing the prospect of a career-ending disability as she adjusts to life with multiple sclerosis, Dr. Lisa Doggett is forced to deal with a new level of uncertainty and vulnerability, and the everyday fear that something new will go wrong. Taking off her white coat—becoming a patient herself—she confronts unimaginable fears, copes with her limitations, and sidesteps her skepticism of alternative medicine to seek help from unlikely sources. MS pushes Doggett—a perfectionist at heart—to embrace self-compassion.

Winner of Child magazine's Book of the Year award for her hilarious and candid book on single motherhood, The Lunch-Box Chronicles, Marion Winik returns to the topic of parenting in these nine essays. Beginning with the story of her second wedding and her move to rural Pennsylvania, she covers everything from blending families and having a child in one's 40s to dealing with the legal problems of teenage boys to the evolution of the values of a family over generations.

Kristina, the second of four children, begins by telling how a little sip of vodka sipped secretly at a party her parents were giving started her on a pathway to addiction. In that instant, alcohol became her pathway to comfort. Over the next eight years, she sank further into addiction, moving on to cocaine and methamphetamines. In telling her story, she gives a brutally honest description of her addiction and crimes.

In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.

Seventeen years ago, when Rebecca Thompson endured a string of life-threatening pregnancy losses and rare medical conditions, her training as a physician didn’t protect her from feeling isolated and overwhelmed. What she longed for was a community of women—or even one encouraging story—to reassure her that she wasn’t alone. Deciding to create the community she couldn’t find in her own time of need, Dr. Thompson reached out to friends, patients, and medical colleagues and asked them to share the stories of their personal journeys to parenthood.

USA Today and New York Times best-selling author Karen Kingsbury is beloved across the nation for her moving tales of faith and redemption. In A Treasury of Miracles for Women, Kingsbury recounts uplifting true stories in which mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters are touched by God’s presence in extraordinary ways.

In a series of intimate and humorous dispatches, McOuat examines her identity as a queer woman, and as a mother, through the lens of the pop culture moments in the '80s and '90s that molded her identity. McOuat stirs the ingredients required to conjure an unsettled spirit: the horrors of pregnancy and motherhood, love and loss, the supernatural, kaleidoscopic sexuality, near-miss experiences, and the unexplained moments in life that leave you haunted.