A Well-Chosen Book Is a Great Last-Minute Mother’s Day Gift

Mom & Me & Mom is Maya Angelou’s final autobiography. It comes recommended by artist Siraad Dirshe, who says it helped her understand the kind of mother she would like to be while also accepting she won’t get it all right. The book explores Angelou and her mother’s relationship, beginning with her mother’s abandonment of Angelou and her brother when they were kids and their eventual reconciliation. It’s a beautiful rendering of a complicated relationship and the possibility of repair.

Arundhati Roy, whose The God of Small Things has been an essential text for decades, recently released her first memoir. It traces her journey to becoming a writer, which is inevitably shaped by her relationship with her mother, whom she describes as her “shelter and her storm.”

I’ve said to anyone who will listen that this is the most important book written in the past five years. It’s a poetic memoir about Sasha Bonét’s upbringing in the South and the many mothers she has encountered. It’s also a book about inheritance, exploring the life of her grandmother, her mother, and eventually her own journey to motherhood and raising her daughter, Sofia.

“This is bell hooks’s seminal work,” says Dirshe of Communion. It’s the final book in her trilogy on love, which includes the very popular All About Love and Salvation. The thesis, says Dirshe, is simple: Self-love is the foundation of everything else. “You are the first relationship that you have; you have to build a deep unwavering love for yourself,” she says. “I want to teach my daughter that. It’s my foundational mission.”

Newsletter writer Leonor Mamanna recommends Oyinkan Brathwaite’s second novel, Cursed Daughters, a multigenerational narrative centering on a woman whose family curse has ruined a generation of relationships. “The folklore aspect of the novel is lovingly woven through,” Mamanna says. “The dynamics between mothers and daughters, sisters and cousins, are complicated, tragic, loving, and familiar.”

In this memoir, Girls creator Lena Dunham explores the cost of fame and ambition along with the impact of chronic illness on a life. The book reportedly sold 60,000 copies in its first week, so if the mom in your life was not among that number, she’d probably like to be.

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, Marie Ndiaye’s latest novel is about a mediocre witch in a mediocre marriage who passes her magical gifts on to her twin daughters. It comes recommended by writer and critic Sasha Bonét, who says despite its magical premise, the book feels very grounded in the lived experience of motherhood. “Everyone thinks their mother holds powers,” Bonét says. “All motherhood is rooted in a kind of magic and witchery that is so common in mothers that it’s rendered mundane.”

Kiese Laymon’s 2018 memoir is structured as an ode to his mother, chronicling his upbringing in the South and their complicated, often abusive, relationship. “It’s a classical tale of the Oedipal mother archetype,” says Bonét. “This book really gave me permission to be honest on the page about family without feeling like I’m betraying the sacred mother. It’s a master class on how to hold criticality and grace without sacrificing either.”

In Lagos, pregnant women are walking into the sea and drowning. Something is haunting them, though it’s unclear what. This is what awaits our main character, Yosoye, an idealistic 23-year-old who moves to the city for a fancy new job and is instantly seduced by its energy. Things change when Yosoye gets pregnant, which forces her to confront the underbelly of the glitzy city she has fallen in love with. “It’s a haunting, powerful story about class, power and privilege,” says writer Nicole Dennis-Benn, who recommended it.

A poignant look into young motherhood in Florida, written by the youngest-ever Booker Prize nominee, Leila Mottley. In this novel, a group of teen moms, called “the Girls,” navigate the tension between girlhood and motherhood against the backdrop of a small town.

Vulture recommendations editor Emily Heller recommends Chouette, a novel about a woman who gives birth to an owl baby after having an affair with an owl. It’s a weird, wonderful book that explores the strangeness of motherhood through a surrealist lens.

If your mom loves a poignant essay, Heller recommends this collection from Jessi Klein covering the hilariously real and heartbreaking parts of life. In one essay, Klein pens an ode to interior designers Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent. In another, she writes about listening to Beyoncé in a Party City parking lot. It’s the kind of book that holds up a mirror to your life and makes you feel less alone.

Both New York writer Emily Gould and researcher Isabel Cristo recommend Loved and Missed, a novel about a grandmother who takes in her granddaughter, Lily, after her daughter’s drug addiction renders her unable to be a mother. It’s in turns witty and painful, exploring the role of motherhood across decades.

“This is a very momish read,” says features editor Julia Edelstein. It’s about a midlife affair in the ’70s that tracks the fallout of that decision over the ensuing years. “It will not change your life, but it’s very easy to get into it — crucial in motherhood.” Deputy editor Alexis Swerdloff has also read the book and agrees.

“Grace Paley is the ultimate New York–mom writer,” says Curbed writer Adriane Quinlan. Paley, who grew up in the Bronx, wrote deftly about city life and the working-class people living it. Quinlan recommends starting with “A Subject of Childhood,” a short story included in The Collected Stories.

Both senior writer Liza Corsillo and senior editor Winnie Yang read and enjoyed Tokyo Express, a 1958 crime novel recently translated into English. It’s about a young couple who washes ashore; the deaths are immediately ruled suicides, but two eagle-eyed detectives notice something is not quite right.

This seven-book series follows a woman stuck in a time loop. Every day is November 18. Each installment spans a different iteration exploring the nature of time and the “volume” of a day. Yang is reading book two, which she says was just as engrossing as the first.

The early days of motherhood can feel like a fugue state, an experience that Szilvia Molnar perfectly captures in her novel, The Nursery. It follows a new mother struggling with postpartum depression who, once a translator, is now a translator for an audience of one. It’s a novel of unraveling and pulls back the curtain on a difficult, underdiscussed period of parenting.

This sort-of prequel to Lily King’s hit novel Writers and Lovers follows Jordan, a student who finds herself in a love triangle with two of her classmates. The novel unfolds over decades, barreling toward a conclusion that left many a reader ugly-crying by the end. It’s a quick read, too; I read it in two sittings and could have done it in one if I had the time.