The Books Briefing: There’s No One Right Way to Be a Mother

“Maternity entails its own unsettling journeys,” The Atlantic’s literary editor, Ann Hulbert, wrote earlier this year. It’s a statement that underscores the fact that motherhood can be fraught for many women, regardless of whether they have children. There’s no singular or “right” way to be a mother, and fiction and nonfiction works alike have been excavating the maternal role of women for years.

A 1979novel by Yuko Tsushima, which was recently translated into English, uses one single mother’s experience to explore what raising a child on your own is like, especially depicts an undocumented woman whose ambivalence about motherhood pushes back against the selfless-immigrant narrative, while the memoir by Vanessa McGrady illuminates some of the stressful situations that come with pursuing an open adoption.