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All about My Mother: Global Stories of Mother-Child Relationships

May 2024

A large pot of succulents and a smaller one sit side by side on a wood floor

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In anticipation of Mother’s Day here in the US, we’re revisiting nine first-person stories, essays, and poems from our archive in which characters explore complex relationships with their mothers. While they vary in genre, language, and tone, these works—from an account of mother and daughter’s shared love of Hindi films to a tale of a Spanish writer telling her deceased mother’s story—capture both the universality and the particularity of a mother’s bond with her child.

A bed of red and yellow busy lizzies

Photo by Michael Elliott Photography

A Mother’s Voice

By Silvia Arazi

Over coffee, my brother pulls up his chair and discreetly asks me if I’m going to write that book about our mother.

Translated from Spanish by Charlotte Coombe

A photograph of Bornholm's rocky seashore and cliff

Photo by Julia Caesar on Unsplash

Sandvig Beach

By Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki

The next time we went to the beach I had to parade around in a lurid life jacket, looking like a visitor from another planet.

Translated from Polish by Jonathan Baines

Multilingual

February 2013 International Graphic Novels Volume Vii My Mother Was A Very Beautiful Woman Karlien De Villiers Page 1

My Mother Was a Very Beautiful Woman

By Karlien de Villiers

My mother started chemotherapy.

Translated from French by Marilyn August

A hospital waiting room with green seats next to bright windows

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

Ito Returns to Japan and Finds Herself in a Real Pinch

Early the next morning, I got a call from Mom. The first words out of her mouth: Will you take me to the hospital today?

Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles

Voracious

By Emma Pedreira

Even though I hate her, my mother probably wrote me letters that she never sent.

Translated from Galician by Kathleen March

My Mother’s Garage Sale

By Daniel Laverdure

You might say my mother loves simple things. But the real point is that she's certain she isn't wrong.

Translated from French by Lawrence Venuti

[My mother works in a cannery]

By Luisa Castro

Love is a work of art in a can.

Translated from Galician by Laura Cesarco Eglin

Multilingual

Cinephilia: On Hindi Movies, My Mother, and Me

By Anandi Mishra

After a while, movies themselves began to take on a maternal air.

[When I was born my mother]

By Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto

I practiced the art of clairvoyance, / became a sorceress, a witch, a woman

Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti

Multilingual