That Kind of Mother
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Average rating2.6
"That Kind of Mother dives deep into big questions about parenthood, adoption, and race: Is mothering something learned, or that you're born to? How far can good intentions stretch? And most of all, can love can really overcome the boundaries of race and class? With his unerring eye for nuance and unsparing sense of irony, Rumaan Alam's second novel is both heartfelt and thought-provoking."--Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere ... From the celebrated author of Rich and Pretty, a novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keep ... Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help--Priscilla Johnson--and begs her to come home with them as her son's nanny. Priscilla's presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca's perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently. Written with the warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us"--
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I wonder if the author named the main character Rebecca because the name Becky is associated with basic, privileged white women ... and that's about right.
I don't think characters have to be likable, and some of the best characters are despicable to one degree or another. I guess in this case her bubble was just so frustrating. Toward the end, she is called out on living her life as if everyone else is a secondary character who only exists to support her, but this is after a book of watching her do this ... and nothing said to her seems to stick.
I wonder if, like the name Rebecca, it might be intentional to make her the protagonist, as opposed to a person of color, like Cheryl. That's privilege, in a nutshell. At the same time, I don't think an author would choose the least interesting character in the story in order to make a point.
Rebecca claims to love Priscilla – the nanny whose child she adopts – but Priscilla is an enigma out of, seemingly, Rebecca never taking a genuine interest. Later, she claims the same thing about Cheryl, Priscilla's daughter, but doesn't know her any better than she did her mother.
Her children seem to only exist to orbit around her – to be her inspiration, or validation, or frustration. Her husband's problems are unacknowledged other than to assert that everything will work out.
Privilege.
Rebecca would be the person saying she doesn't see skin color, and that someone could be purple with polka dots for all she cares. The only pass I can give her is that the book is set in the 80s and 90s, even if white women are still sorting out platitudes and microaggressions to this day.
The author does use the time period cleverly to speak to a modern reader. Rebecca hopes her black son will be like Bill Cosby. Even as she deals with Princess Diana's premature death, she imagines sparkling futures for other golden people who the reader knows will also die tragically. She believes in the near future racism will be a non-issue. Does it feel like a non-issue to you? Have we reached the promised land?
I don't know what to do, mentally, with this book, how to file it on my mind. Other than irritation at the main character, my reaction is pretty muted. I wanted more time with Cheryl, and by that I mean as the main character. Perhaps the best scenes were the ones where she called Rebecca on her cluelessness. I would love to know Priscilla's thoughts as well. Come to think of it, the husband would have been an interesting POV character. Her son, Andrew.
Instead I spent 300 pages with Becky. :)
