bookshelf

THE MOTHER SELF

Name: THE MOTHER SELF
Author: Talia Gutin
ISBN: 9781647428952

POEMS

by Talia Gutin ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2025

A sentimental and often beautiful homage to motherhood.

bookshelf

Gutin presents a poetry collection about the joys, challenges, and revelations of parenting.

The poet delves into the multifaceted experience of mothering in this book dedicated to her son. She opens with “Day One,” commemorating the moment when a child is placed on the speaker’s chest and her “whole world changed.” Being a mother compels the speaker of “To Contain Time” to exist in the present moment; it softens her, and she finds “exquisite peace” in her son’s presence. “You Become My World” mentions the “puddles / of breast milk” around the house, and “A Revival” limns the feeling of absence when putting a baby down in his crib; “When He Laughs” shows the speaker rejoicing in her baby’s joy. In various pieces, the narrator grapples with the permeable boundaries between herself and her son, observing that she’s lost parts of herself as a mother; she wonders who she was before, or who she would be without him. She muses on what her son’s smile will look like in the future, and imagines him growing into a kindergartener, an adolescent, and a college student. The poet concludes with “To the New Mother,” a direct address that reassures readers: “I promise you— / the pain passes, // the loneliness / lifts. // Let this time be your temple, / your induction.” Gutin acutely captures the “dreamy and / disorienting” (“Story of Self”) experience of new parenthood in this tenderhearted poetry collection. However, some lines border on cliche, such as, “If my love for you / were measured in distances, / there would be no end.” Still, the speaker’s reverence for her son remains clear in lines such as “Holding him / feels holy” (“The Mother”). Parents will also relate to the description of the “maddening” (“Day 55”) experience when babies refuse to nap. Throughout, Gutin’s works offer visceral sensory details, from a child’s “guttural giggles” (“When He Laughs”) to his messy hair that “smells of sweat / and orange blossoms” (“Monday Morning”).

A sentimental and often beautiful homage to motherhood.

Pub Date: May 6, 2025

ISBN: 9781647428952

Page Count: 104

Publisher: She Writes Press

Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2025

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS

bookshelf

THINK YOU'LL BE HAPPY

MOVING THROUGH GRIEF WITH GRIT, GRACE, AND GRATITUDE

by Nicole Avant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 17, 2023

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

bookshelf

Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.

“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023

ISBN: 9780063304413

Page Count: 288

Publisher: HarperOne

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023

Categories:

bookshelf

THE MINOTAUR AT CALLE LANZA

by Zito Madu ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2024

An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.

bookshelf

An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn.

In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu’s experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son’s choices. Unfortunately, the author’s seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libertà bridge was “magical,” but nothing he describes—the “endless water on both sides,” the nearby seagulls—is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, “I was one of the few Black people around.” He cites Borges, giving special note to the author’s “The House of Asterion,” in which the minotaur “explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth” of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book’s second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with “the head of a bull” and his body “larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome.” It’s an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before.

An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.