Its mother’s day season across the world. Although I have referred to it as a season, it is often celebrated on different days by different churches and different cultures across the world. I am a sucker for all things in the motherhood spectrum because I think it is the most special place to be whether the kids are your birth children or not. To be A Mum is a thing of the heart and it is beyond just having the babies biologically. Being a mother is God’s given assignment, a truly special place to be. The atrocities committed against motherhood is with us as we awake every day. How do we describe the pain of the killing of two priests in Benue? What are we to tell their mothers? What about the mothers in Syria and the parents of the Chibok girls, what do we tell Leah’s mother, the young girl who we are informed chose to stay back on account of failing to renounce her faith? What do you tell mothers of missing children, kidnapped children and children truly lost in the throes of codeine? Motherhood beautiful as it is facing many challenges today. It is on account of all of these difficulties that we must remember our mothers this year and treat them with love and kindness. For us Catholics, may is the month of the mother of Jesus Christ and she is celebrated throughout May for her sacrifices and her mediating role for all Christians. Here then are books for our mothers as we wish them Happy Mother’s day in spite of the odds all around us.
1) Those bones are not my Child by Toni Cade Bambara.
This book focuses on one black family whose son goes missing. While the estranged parents are searching for him, the story takes us through the political, social and cultural life of Atlanta in the early eighties where children were being kidnapped and murdered. Although fictional, it is a historical novel, taking its theme from the murder of forty black children in Atlanta in the eighties. Published after the author died, the 669-page book edited by the author’s friend Toni Morrison is described as the author’s Magnum opus. It took twelve years to write the book based on research and newspaper cuttings.
2) Buchi Emechetta, The joys of Motherhood.
This is a world famous book by Nigerian writer, Buchi Emechetta whose main character in this is going through the many effects of post -colonial Nigeria on traditional institutions while giving birth and raising her children. Highly recommended.
3) The law of loving others by Kate Axelrod
Is a young adult novel which focusses on Emma, a young girl handling the realities of her Mum’s psychological Schizophrenia. This book is as tender as it is amazing. When one realizes how many parents are being cared for by their daughters in a reversal of roles. It makes this book even more poignant.
4) Mom and Me and Mom
Written by award winning writer and Poet, Maya Angelou is one of my favorite mother’s daybook not only to read but to gift to others as a mother’s day gift. I have read this book like four times and I am intrigued every time. This is the book of forgiveness by Maya Angelou raised by her grandmother because her mother abandoned her and her brother when she was a child and came back into her life when she was an adult. It captures her rebellion in dealing with her estranged Mom and the gift of reconciliation and forgiveness they both shared. An awesome book.
5) A mother’s love is unparalleled and no book captures this for me like celebrated Chilean American, Isabelle Allende’s memoir about her daughter, Paula. The book titled Paula is a letter Allende wrote to her dying daughter while she lay on her hospital bed. Isabel recalls that her daughter was well one minute and fell tragically ill the next. A mother’s outpouring of love and grief rolled together makes for a powerful testimony of a mother’s love and an interesting read but leaves us all teary at the end, as Paula dies from her illness. A truly bedazzling memoir, tender, painful and haunting.
