Listen To Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We're Saying Now

Description

A fantastic awakening of why our mothers are important, taking readers on a journey through motherhood in all its complexity, diversity, and humour. Based on a sensational national performance movement, the book showcases the experiences of ordinary people no matter their race, gender or age. It celebrates and validates what it means to be a mother today, with an honesty and candour that is arrestingly stimulating and refreshing. The stories express an eclectic mix of themes: adoption, emptying nests, first-time motherhood, foster-parenting.

Ann Imig is the founder of the live-reading series Listen to Your Mother, which is a rapidly growing national movement with shows in dozens of cities. She writes the blog Ann's Rants, which was named to Babble's Top 100 Mom Blogs and Top 50 Twitter Moms, and was honored as a Voice of the Year from 2010-2013 by BlogHer. Ann lives with her husband and children in Madison, Wisconsin.

Named one of POPSUGAR's Best Books of 2015! "Presents motherhood in all its multitudinous iterations..." -Elle "Touching and humorous anthology."-Family Circle "Brimming with essays from quick-witted, unique writers-ranging from new voices to established ones like Jenny Lawson and Jennifer Weiner-this book covers all parenting territory. Part of it is funny and a lot of it is tear-jerking... You may find yourself staying up way past your bedtime because this one is so hard to put down." -Parents magazine "Lively personal stories."-Cosmopolitan "Writers reflect on wisdom gleaned from the women who raised them, motherhood and more in this charming, often funny essay collection."-Good Housekeeping "This frank, funny, and touching anthology...discusses the complex and diverse array of parenting experiences, from step-motherhood to infertility, and everything in between."-Real Simple "[Listen To Your Mother] proves absolutely that there is no exclusive definition of 'mother'... is nearly guaranteed to shake up your preconceptions of motherhood...There's a mother for everyone in this array."-BookReporter "A collection of hilarious, sometimes-raunchy, and always thought-provoking stories about personal experiences with race, gender, and motherhood."-PopSugar "A fascinating glimpse into what motherhood means today for families with vastly different backgrounds and experiences."-American Way "This collection serves as a significant contribution to literature on and about motherhood because it breaks down the isolation that so often surrounds the topic.... These candid writings feel like a dinner date with a group of smart mothers who share their successes and failures with wit, fear, melancholy, playfulness, and all of the emotions that surround the reality of parenting." -Library Journal "The stories in the collection run the gamut, and the result is varied enough to ensure that readers who don't identify with one take will easily find resonance in another. Some will leave readers laughing out loud, while others will leave them crying. All of this collection's stories, however, have one thing in common: readers will be left planning to call their mothers." -Publishers Weekly "A collection of personal essays about the importance of connecting mothers to each other for support.... The essays are short, which enables the book to cover a lot of ground, but they also pack a strong emotional punch-and they're almost certain to leave any mother feeling less alone." -Kirkus Reviews "With their authentic glimpses into this hard, beautiful thing we call life, the essays between these covers led me to fresh perspectives on mothering and being mothered. I savored the open vulnerability that met me with each turn of the page. From the hilarious to the profound, and not bound by gender or geography, these stories generously plumbed the depths of all that is motherhood." -Anna Whiston Donaldson, New York Times-bestselling author of Rare Bird"I've been a longtime fan of Ann's Listen to Your Mother movement, and I just adore this collection. The stories are diverse, yet bound together by Listen to Your Mother's trademark rawness and honesty. A perfect gift for any woman in your life . . . or yourself!" -Jill Smokler, New York Times-bestselling author of Confessions of a Scary Mommy "Listen to Your Mother manages to do what few anthologies do: it makes us see ourselves clearly through the eyes of many different writers-all gifted and many wickedly funny. These writers voice the things that everyone thinks and no one says. Long live the mothers!" -Suzanne Finnamore, award-winning author of Split