10 Empowering Books About Mothers

Susan Lieu’s mother was “the general of the house and the center of our livelihood,” as she puts it in her striking debut memoir. After ushering her family out of Vietnam in the 1980s and resettling in California, Lieu’s mother established two successful nail salons that allowed her loved ones to thrive. But tragedy struck when the author was just 11 years old: Má died after a botched tummy tuck. In the wake of her passing, and for the next 20 years, Lieu was left searching for answers that no one seemed ready to provide: Who was her mother? What was she like in Vietnam? What compelled her to undergo cosmetic surgery? And how could the surgeon who performed the botched operation possibly still be working? The Manicurist’s Daughter is the culmination of Lieu’s search, a searing narrative that “braids together family history, grief, body image, food, class, race, and resilience for insight that must not be missed” (Elle).

In her youth, Erin French fell in love with food on her family’s 25-acre farm. These days she’s a professional chef and the owner of The Lost Kitchen, an award-winning restaurant in Maine. It’s what happened in between these two stages that makes French’s life story so remarkable. After a failed relationship, French found herself struggling with anxiety and addiction as she faced the challenges of single motherhood. The road to recovery was difficult. Throughout, one person motivated her to persevere: her son. This is the true story of how a mother’s love and the guiding light of her child led to freedom and renewal.

A self-described feminist since kindergarten, Isabel Allende grew up watching her single mother do whatever it took to provide for her three children. As a young woman in the late 1960s, Allende dedicated herself to journalism and writing, determined to carve out a life for herself. Now the highly influential author looks back on her journey, examining the moments that defined her as a woman and as a mother, and asking what her work will mean to future generations of women.

History has a lot to say about Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. In this moving new biography, Anna Malaika Tubbs honors the women who raised them: Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin. Hailed as a crucial missing chapter in the Civil Rights era and the fight for equality in America, Tubbs’s book shows how these three mothers protected their family through the Jim Crow years and planted the seeds of activism in their sons.

Crucial to Michelle Zauner’s identity as a Korean-American is the influence of her mother. Of course, Zauner doesn’t fully realize this fact until her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Crying in H Mart is the story of that revelation. The pressures of being the only Korean kid in town, the cherished time Zauner spent with her grandmother in Seoul, and the struggles and tender moments she shared with her mother — all of these memories of family and identity come flooding back when Zauner is forced to reckon with her mother’s death and forge her own identity.

Hilarie Burton Morgan (of One Tree Hill and Lethal Weapon fame) does what some Hollywood stars may dream of but few rarely do: She leaves fame behind to live in a small-town community. Becoming a mother radically shifts her priorities, to the point where she and her husband buy a working farm in upstate New York and take over the candy store in their new hometown. Exchanging red carpets for chicken coops, Morgan’s story is an inspiring tale of having a vision for your family and of building a new life without regrets.

Let’s be honest: Motherhood is fraught with fear. That’s why it makes excellent fodder for a thriller like this one. Molly is at home with her two young children when danger strikes. Someone is in her house, and they know a bit too much about her family. Motherly instinct to protect her babies kicks in, but so does something else — and it’s a side of her personality that Molly isn’t ready to face.

Justine grew up in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, surrounded by her community’s strong, complicated mothers and women. Now a mother herself, Justine makes the difficult decision to leave the reservation behind in hopes of building a new life for her daughter in one of Texas’s many oil towns. Nothing goes as planned, however, not even the weather. Soon Justine wonders whether leaving the protection of the matriarchs back home, no matter their flaws, was the right move.

Carmen has trouble building a new life in America, in part because her mother insists on staying behind in their home country of Cuba. A generation later, Carmen’s daughter, Jeanette, is a recovering addict; Jeanette finds purpose in taking in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. The challenges these women face are connected by the fact that they’re trying their best at being mothers. While their choices may vary, the shared strength of their family’s legacy holds them together.

Imagine a world run by women, but only because a plague has killed almost all of the men. Now imagine that your child is one of the few remaining boys on Earth. Cole’s challenge, as she travels across the U.S. with her son disguised as a daughter, is to outrun government agencies, corporations, and cults that all want to get their hands on her son. A safe haven for her child — it’s the promise every mother makes from day one, and Cole is determined to fulfill it.

At the heart of this mesmerizing narrative are three generations of Taiwanese women and the myths of their homeland that they embody. A daughter wakes up one day with a tiger tail and pangs of ravenous hunger. A grandmother’s letters seem to grow out of the ground. Love blossoms in unexpected forms. As the daughter of the family works to decipher these strange events, she realizes that she must face her family’s secrets if she hopes to create a new reality that prior generations only dreamed of — the freedom to love whom you want.