With classics like J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and contemporary hits like Min Jin Lee's Pachinko, this collection gathers texts that grapple with the complex and archetypal role of the mother.
A Game of Thrones is a 1996 epic fantasy novel by George R. R. Martin and is the first in his long-running A Song of Ice and Fire series. The novel introduces the audience to the fictional world of Westeros, where characters become embroiled in a complicated web of plots, conspiracies, and betrayals as they pursue power. A Game of Thrones won numerous awards on publication and was adapted for television in 2011. This guide... Read A Game of Thrones Summary
A List of Cages is a 2017 young adult novel by Robin Roe. The story centers on the friendship between two teenagers, Adam Blake and Julian Harlow. Adam and Julian first become friends when Adam is Julian's reading buddy in grammar school. The friendship deepens when Julian's parents die, and he lives in Adam’s house as a foster child. Although they knew each other in grammar school, the main action of this story takes place... Read A List of Cages Summary
"All the Years of Her Life" is a short story by Canadian author Morley Callaghan, first published in his collection Now That April’s Here and Other Stories in 1936. Set in a drugstore in an unknown city, it centers around a young man named Alfred Higgins, who is caught by his boss stealing items from his workplace. Instead of calling the police, the owner, Mr. Carr, calls Alfred’s mother to discuss her son’s actions. Exploring... Read All the Years of Her Life Summary
Annie John, published in 1985, is the second book by the Antiguan American author Jamaica Kincaid (née Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson). Annie John is a coming-of-age novel that follows the life of a young girl from age 10 to 17, until she leaves her home in Antigua, bound for nursing school in England. In the novel, Annie describes her most important relationships, and the bond with her mother is chief among them. Life is heaven... Read Annie John Summary
“A Pair of Silk Stockings” (1897) is a short story (2000-words) written by Kate Chopin, first published in Vogue magazine. The story is a work of Literary Realism, set at the time of publication and told from the third-person point of view. It describes the experience of Mrs. Sommers, a married, middle-class woman raising a family on a modest income, who unexpectedly comes into $15, a considerable amount of money in 1897. The interest of... Read A Pair of Silk Stockings Summary
A Pale View of Hills (1982) is Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel. Born in Nagasaki in 1954, Ishiguro immigrated with his family to the United Kingdom when he was five years old. Despite his family’s Japanese origins, the author frequently states in interviews that his experience with Japanese culture is very limited, as he spent all his adult life in England. Simultaneously, however, growing up in a Japanese family developed in Ishiguro a different perspective compared... Read A Pale View of Hills Summary
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is a 1970 middle-grade novel by bestselling American author Judy Blume. The story focuses on 11-year-old Margaret Ann Simon and her family’s move to New Jersey at the beginning of her sixth-grade year. As Margaret navigates her new public school and new friend dynamics, she struggles to form a positive self-image about her changing body and starts exploring her religious beliefs. Although it was not Blume’s first novel... Read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Summary
As I Lay Dying is a Southern Gothic novel by William Cuthbert Faulkner, which he published in 1930. The story follows a poor, rural family’s journey across Mississippi to bury their dead matriarch and is marked by dark humor and stream-of-consciousness style narration.Faulkner (1897-1962) was a writer from Oxford, Mississippi. His novels and works of short fiction, including The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930), earned him the Nobel Prize... Read As I Lay Dying Summary
“A Sorrowful Woman” is Gail Godwin’s most anthologized short story and tackles the themes of depression, domesticity, and female identity. Godwin is a best-selling American author and multiple National Book Award finalist who often explores these themes in her novels. “A Sorrowful Woman,” a subversion of the fairy tale, details a woman’s struggles with her role as wife and mother and the expectations and disappointments that lead her to suicide. Godwin’s unnamed characters upend the... Read A Sorrowful Woman Summary
“Average Waves in Unprotected Waters,” originally published in the February 28, 1977 edition of The New Yorker, is one of American author Anne Tyler’s most anthologized stories. Through the third-person-limited point of view of the protagonist, Bet Blevins, Tyler presents the story of a single mother on the day she intends to institutionalize her developmentally disabled son, Arnold. As Bet struggles to navigate her complex emotions regarding Arnold, the story explores themes of the conflicting... Read Average Waves in Unprotected Waters Summary
Pat Conroy’s 1995 novel Beach Music is a work of historical fiction. Set primarily in South Carolina, the novel follows a community fractured by memories of the Holocaust and the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. Beach Music explores the nature of generational trauma and the way our pasts shape our futures. The power of forgiveness and the differences between duty and loyalty are also prominent themes. The setting and culture of the American... Read Beach Music Summary
Bird Box is a 2014 post-apocalyptic, dystopian horror novel by Josh Malerman. The story follows a woman’s struggle to protect two children in a world where people are driven to violence by unseen monsters, touching on such themes as paranoia, raising children to deal with an uncertain future, and the dangers of exceptionalism. Bird Box won a Michigan Notable Book Award and was also nominated for the James Herbert Award as well as the Bram... Read Bird Box Summary
Bluebird, Bluebird (2017) by Texas native Attica Locke, published by Little, Brown and Company, is a 2018 Edgar and Anthony award-winning mystery novel. It was also selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Kirkus Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2017. The first in the Highway 59 series follows Texas Ranger Darren Mathews through the backroads of Texas in search of justice and reform... Read Bluebird, Bluebird Summary
Bluefish (2011) is a young adult novel by Pat Schmatz. This text is also sometimes classified as middle grade. The novel centers around Travis, an eighth grader who has lost his parents and dog and recently moved to a new school. Travis befriends Velveeta, a charismatic girl who is grieving the loss of her stand-in father figure, Calvin. As Travis and Velveeta’s friendship develops, they explore the challenges of coping with loss and family trauma... Read Bluefish Summary
Breath, Eyes, Memory is a novel by Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat, first published in 1994. The book is semi-autobiographical: like the protagonist, 12-year-old Sophie Caco, Danticat herself was born in Haiti but moved to the United States at a young age. She has since written several novels and short stories about Haiti, immigration, and the complex ways that one’s identity is formed by where they are from and where they now live. The novel... Read Breath, Eyes, Memory Summary
Carmilla is a Gothic novella in which a young woman named Laura details her relationship with a vampire in the form of a young woman named Carmilla. The first event that Laura details in the novella is an episode from her childhood: a six-year-old Laura is attempting to sleep when she is visited by a mysterious young lady (later revealed to be the vampire Carmilla, or at least a representation of Carmilla) who bites her... Read Carmilla Summary
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a key figure in the British Romantic Era of poetry wrote the Gothic narrative poem “Christabel” in two parts, the first in 1797, and the second in 1800. Though it was still unfinished, “Christabel” was published in 1816.“Christabel” is Coleridge’s longest poem, at almost 700 lines. It is also the least edited of Coleridge’s work. Most of the poem contrasts the innocent piety of Christabel with the experience and supernatural abilities of... Read Christabel Summary
Clock Dance (2018) is Anne Tyler’s 22nd domestic literary fiction novel that explores the smaller details of the human condition. Clock Dance, which spans time periods from 1967 to 2017, follows Willa, a woman who’s always made herself useful to those around her without any regard for her own needs. Through Willa’s life, Clock Dance explores themes of self-fulfillment, appreciation, passivity, and community to show how people do (or don’t) change throughout time. This novel... Read Clock Dance Summary
Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is a 2002 middle-grade horror novel that follows the titular character through a strange world of wonder and fear. Coraline must use her wit, her bravery, and the help of her allies to survive and escape the strange world. As the story unfolds, it examines What It Means to Be Brave, The Drawbacks of Always Getting What You Want, and The Importance of Having Allies. Coraline is a New York Times bestseller... Read Coraline Summary
Published in 1989, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, is an in-depth and long-ranging look at the crisis of infant and early-child mortality in the rural communities of the Brazilian Northeast. The author of the book is Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a former aidworker who returned to Brazil as an anthropologist. While the object of this book is infant and child mortality, its main focus is not a medical or scientific approach to... Read Death Without Weeping Summary
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee (1982) is a hybrid form of prose poetry, autobiography, ethnography, criticism, and fictional experiments. Cha was a Korean American visual artist, poet, and filmmaker. She was tragically murdered only a week after the book was published. The book went out of print for several years before interest in Cha’s work was revived in the 1990s by feminist authors, such as Norma Alarcón. Cha’s work was honored with an exhibition including... Read Dictee Summary
Dreaming in Cuban is Cuban American author Cristina García’s first novel. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992 and garnered positive reviews from readers and critics alike. A multi-generational family saga that shifts back and forth between the experiences and eras of multiple narrators, Dreaming in Cuban explores themes of immigration and exile, family dynamics, political ideology, religion, and the impact of the Cuban Revolution on Cubans and Cuban Americans. The... Read Dreaming in Cuban Summary
In Dreamland, a young adult novel by Sarah Dessen, a teenage girl named Caitlin O’Koren reacts to the disappearance of her sister by breaking away from the path that was set out for her. The novel is broken into three parts that focus on the core of the conflicts in each section. Part I, “Cass,” traces the O’Koren family after Cass, the eldest of two daughters, runs away instead of attending Yale. Part II, entitled... Read Dreamland Summary
Ellen Foster is a work of adult fiction by US novelist Kaye Gibbons, first published by Algonquin Books in 1987. The novel was Gibbons’s debut, and it won the Sue Kaufman Prize for literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a notable citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Critics praised the novel for its unsentimental outlook and the wry, distinct voice of its protagonist. Ellen, a young girl living in the American... Read Ellen Foster Summary
In Empire Falls, published in 2001, award-winning author Richard Russo focuses his sharp observations on family, faith, and hope for the future in small-town America, where the factories have left, the populations are dwindling, and the prospects are shrinking. Miles Roby almost got out of Empire Falls, but his mother’s illness brought him back a semester shy of graduating college. Now he runs the Empire Grill, a landmark that still anchors the dying town, and... Read Empire Falls Summary
IntroductionEliot Schrefer’s coming-of-age novel Endangered was published by Scholastic in 2012 and is the first book in The Ape Quartet. Set the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the story is written for a young adult audience and is a 2012 National Book Award finalist in Young People’s Literature. The novel follows Sophie Biyoya-Ciardulli’s journey as she navigates the perils of war-torn Congo in search of her mother, protecting a young, orphaned bonobo throughout her journey... Read Endangered Summary
Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother is a best-selling nonfiction book by Sonia Nazario, an American journalist best known for her work on social justice. Originally published in 2006, the book is based on Nazario’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Enrique’s Journey” series, which was written in six parts and published in The Los Angeles Times.The book, which has been published in eight languages and adapted for young adults in... Read Enrique's Journey Summary
A thrilling tale of thievery, betrayal, and mistaken identity, Fingersmith, by Welsh author Sarah Waters, tells the story of two women from two very different stations of life whose fates are inextricably linked. Set in the 1860s, Fingersmith is narrated alternately by Sue Smith (also known as Sue Trinder) and Maud Lilly. One is a young “fingersmith”—slang for a thief—lovingly protected from the worst of her world by Mrs. Sucksby; the other is an aristocratic... Read Fingersmith Summary
Barbara Kingsolver’s 2012 novel Flight Behavior presents a symbolic connection between Dellarobia Turnbow, an unhappy farm wife who secretly dreams of running away from it all, and a surprising migration of monarch butterflies that alight upon her in-laws’ property in Feathertown, Tennessee. As the butterflies struggle to survive and reproduce to continue their species, Dellarobia struggles in her efforts to deal with the consequences of her past decisions and the possibility of her new life... Read Flight Behavior Summary
Forged by Fire is a novel for young adults written by Sharon M. Draper. It is the second book in the Hazelwood High trilogy, which focuses on the lives of high schoolers in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was first published in 1997 and won the Coretta Scott King Award. Forged by Fire focuses on the life of Gerald Nickelby, a young African American boy, and his struggles with physical and emotional abuse.Plot SummaryGerald lives with his... Read Forged By Fire Summary
For One More Day, by Mitch Albom, tells the story of Charles “Chick” Benetto, a retired baseball player fallen on hard times. The story is framed by a prologue and epilogue where a narrator explains that they are telling the story from Chick’s perspective, “because I’m not sure you would believe this story if you didn’t hear it in his voice” (7). The book is comprised of short chapters told in the first person, and... Read For One More Day Summary
“Friend of My Youth” is the title short story from the collection of the same name by Alice Munro, published in 1990. The collection won the 1990 Trillium Book Award, which recognizes writers from Ontario, Canada.Narrated in the first person, the story is told from the perspective of an unnamed female writer in mourning for her mother, who died some years earlier of Parkinson’s disease. The narrator describes a recurrent dream that she used to... Read Friend of My Youth Summary
Future Home of the Living God is a 2017 speculative fiction novel by American author Louise Erdrich. Told by Cedar Hawk Songmaker, a pregnant Native American woman in her mid-twenties living in Minneapolis, the story consists of her reflections as she waits to give birth. In the novel’s pre-apocalyptic America, human evolution has reversed, meaning that the species has begun to biologically regress into an infertile state. Meanwhile, the United States government has undermined citizens’... Read Future Home of the Living God Summary
Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” was first published on June 26, 1978 in The New Yorker and was later included in Kincaid’s debut 1983 short story collection, At the Bottom of the River. According to Kincaid, her works, including “Girl,” can be considered autobiographical. Kincaid grew up on the Caribbean island of Antigua and had a strained relationship with her mother before Kincaid moved to New York City. These same cultural and familial contexts are present in... Read Girl Summary
Girl, Stolen (2010) is a young adult crime/thriller novel written by April Henry. It tells the story of Cheyenne Wilder, a blind 16-year-old girl who is abducted during a car theft, and of Griffin Sawyer, the teen who steals the car while unaware Cheyenne is inside it. The novel has received numerous awards since publication, including the Young Adult Library Services Association Best Fiction for Young Adults Award. The book was also selected as a... Read Girl, Stolen Summary
God Help the Child, the eleventh novel by critically-acclaimed writer Toni Morrison, was published in 2015. This guide is based on the 2015 Kindle book published by Borzoi Books, an Alfred A. Knopf imprint. One of Morrison’s few works with a contemporary setting and cast of characters, the novel explores themes related to the impact of racism and colorism on children, the prevalence of trauma such as child sexual abuse in the lives of children... Read God Help The Child Summary
English poet and classicist Robert Graves wrote his autobiography, Good-Bye to All That, in 1929, at the age of 34. Graves undertook the writing of his autobiography with the hope of crafting a best-selling book that would support his career as a writer. Good-Bye to All That details Graves’s life from his upper-middle-class childhood in England to his service as a military officer in World War I, and on to his first few years as... Read Goodbye to All That Summary
“Good Country People” first appeared in Flannery O’Connor’s short story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find in 1955 and is widely regarded as an exemplary work of Southern Gothic literature. Like many of O’Connor’s works, “Good Country People” contains a critique of the American South and religious hypocrisy rooted in O’Connor’s worldview informed by her Catholic faith. This study guide uses the 1988 Library of America edition of Flannery O’Connor’s Collected Works. The... Read Good Country People Summary
Goodnight Mister Tom is a work of historical fiction written by Michelle Magorian and published in 1981. The novel is aimed at an audience of middle grade readers. It tells the story of eight-year-old William Beech, who, at the start of WWII, has to move with his abusive mother from an impoverished suburb of London to the countryside, where they are in the care of an elderly recluse, Thomas Oakley. The novel explores the impact... Read Goodnight Mister Tom Summary
Originally published in 1993, Heart of a Champion is a young adult novel written by award-winning author Carl Deuker, whose work is primarily about sports and intended for young adult readers. The novel is the first-person narrative of a California boy, Seth, whose father died prematurely, leaving a huge void. Seth befriends Jimmy, whose love of baseball quickly becomes Seth’s passion as well. After the death of his friend after an alcohol-induced car crash, Seth... Read Heart of a Champion Summary
Here by Richard McGuire is a graphic novel published on December 4, 2014, by Pantheon Books. The graphic novel focuses on the same corner of a room over billions of years. It depicts the area long before the house is built and long after it falls. By using different visual styles, overlapping panels, and non-chronological narration, McGuire creates a narrative that comments on the nature of time and life. Here is considered a transformative work... Read Here Summary
Originally published in 2002, Markus Zusak’s I Am the Messenger is a young adult realistic fiction novel. Ed Kennedy, the protagonist and narrator, is a 19-year-old cab driver whose average life takes an unexpected turn when he stops a bank robber. After this moment of heroism, he begins receiving mysterious playing cards with cryptic messages that lead him to people in need of his assistance. The novel is set in suburban Sydney and draws on... Read I Am The Messenger Summary
I’ll Give You the Sun (2015) is an award-winning novel penned by Jandy Nelson about relationships, art, and destiny. It follows the story of twins Noah and Jude Sweetwine who once shared a close relationship but find themselves barely speaking to each other two years after their mother’s death.Jandy Nelson is an American author who writes young adult fiction. I’ll Give You the Sun is her second novel, which won numerous awards and honors, including... Read I'll Give You the Sun Summary
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens is a collection of essays, speeches, and letters by Alice Walker. The collection was published in 1983. Walker is also a novelist and a poet. Her most famous novel, The Color Purple, was published in 1982 and won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1983. The novel was adapted into a movie as well as a musical. These essays are collected from different books and... Read In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens Summary
In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio is a critically-acclaimed work of nonfiction by Philippe Bourgois, first published in 1995. It won the 1996 C. Wright Mills Award and the 1997 Margaret Mead Award. A second edition, with a prologue and an additional epilogue, was released in 2003. The book explores themes of respect, independence, autocracy, self-worth, racism, and social marginalization. Bourgois is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, History and... Read In Search of Respect Summary
“In the Land of the Free” is the first short story written by British Canadian author Edith Maude Eaton, who was of British and Chinese descent. As one of the first Asian North American writers, her works explored themes of racial discrimination, the difficulties of assimilation, and the effects of the legal system on immigration and kinship. “In the Land of the Free,” originally published by the Montreal Daily Witness in 1890, explores the latter... Read In the Land of the Free Summary
In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), which premiered on Broadway in 2010, has since become one of Sarah Ruhl’s best-known and most popularly produced plays. Prior to Ruhl’s Broadway debut with In the Next Room, she earned a MacArthur Genius Fellowship and a PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award, and her 2004 play The Clean House was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In the Next Room was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist and... Read In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) Summary
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“I Stand Here Ironing” was originally published in 1961 in Tell Me a Riddle, Tillie Olsen’s first collection of short stories. Since then, it has greatly impacted feminist scholars and creative writers alike and is often anthologized. The short story is an intimate exploration of one woman’s experience with motherhood between the 1930 and 1950s. Her oldest daughter, Emily, is 19 years old and has been neglected and separated from the narrator due to factors... Read I Stand Here Ironing Summary
Leaving Time, the 2014 novel by Jodi Picoult, is the story of a young girl’s search for her missing mother. When Jenna Metcalf was 3 years old, her mother, Alice, went missing under mysterious circumstances. Jenna’s parents run an elephant sanctuary in New Hampshire. One night, an employee’s body is found trampled by an elephant. Jenna’s mother is taken to the hospital with a head injury, possibly caused by the same elephant, but checks herself... Read Leaving Time Summary
Like Water for Chocolate is the debut novel of Laura Esquivel, published in Mexico in 1989 and then translated into English by Carol and Thomas Christensen. Esquivel has sold over four million copies of the novel worldwide. She is a novelist and active politician serving in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. She collaborated with her husband at the time to adapt the novel into a film in 1992, which was then nominated for a Golden... Read Like Water for Chocolate Summary
Little Fires Everywhere is a New York Times bestselling novel by Celeste Ng published in 2017. In the town of Shaker Heights, Ohio, Elena Richardson rents her family’s property on Winslow Road to Mia and Pearl Warren, a mother and daughter duo who inspire her sense of charity. Mia is an artist, and her lack of rootedness and intense focus on her art unnerve Mrs. Richardson, who lives an orderly life. Their lives become further... Read Little Fires Everywhere Summary
Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro was published in 1971 and is composed of eight interlinked short stories. Munro examines the everyday life of a young girl, Del Jordan, as she comes of age in a small, Canadian town during the 1940s, against the backdrop of World War II. Inspired by Munro’s childhood, the narrator explores the setting, including local wildlife and the town’s inhabitants, and focuses on themes surrounding coming of age... Read Lives of Girls and Women Summary
Lives of the Saints (1990) by Nino Ricci is the first in a trilogy of novels about an Italian immigrant to Canada, Vittorio Innocente, and his family. The author, Nino Ricci, is the son of Italian immigrants who grew up in Leamington, Ontario, home to a large community of Italian immigrants. The novel is a coming-of-age story told in first-person narration that details Vittorio’s life growing up in an impoverished small town in Italy, and... Read Lives of the Saints Summary
Locomotion, Jacqueline Woodson’s 2003 novel in verse, follows the perspective of Lonnie Collins Motion, nicknamed Locomotion. After his parents die in a fire and his sister is adopted, Lonnie grieves and navigates life, first in a group home and then with Miss Edna, his foster mother. Through poetry, he slowly finds joy in life again, highlighting the themes of The Search for Identity and Belonging, The Healing Power of Writing, and The Enduring Support of... Read Locomotion Summary
Longbourn (2013) is a work of fiction by British author Jo Baker, who is the author of several other novels of historical fiction and literary suspense. Longbourn depicts what life is like for the servants of the Bennet family of Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice. While events in Austen’s book frame this novel, Longbourn follows the inner lives of housemaid Sarah, housekeeper Mrs. Hill, and James Smith, the mysterious footman who shows up... Read Longbourn Summary