Mamas Child, Joan Steinau Lester
Mamas Child, Joan Steinau Lester
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Mama's Child

Author: Joan Steinau Lester

Narrator: Rachel Leslie, Eliza Foss

Unabridged: 12 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 09/27/2013


Synopsis

A stunning tale about the deeply entrenched conflicts between a white mother and her biracial daughter. Mama' s Child is story of an idealistic young white woman who travelled to the American South as a civil rights worker, fell in love with an African American man, and started a family in San Francisco, where the more liberal city embraced them-- except when it didn' t. They raise a son and daughter, but the tensions surrounding them have a negative impact on their marriage, and they divorce when their children are still young. For their biracial daughter, this split further destabilizes her already challenged sense of self--" Am I black or white?" she must ask herself, " Where do I belong?" Is she her father' s daughter alone? As the years pass, the chasm between them widens, even as the mother attempts to hold on to the emotional chord that binds them. It isn' t until the daughter, Ruby, herself becomes a wife and mother that she begins to develop compassion and understanding for the many ways that her own mother' s love transcended race and questions of identity.

About Joan Steinau Lester

Joan Steinau Lester, Ed.D., is the author of three previous books, the most recent Mama’s Child, as well as Fire in My Soul, a civil rights biography of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. Her first YA novel, Black, White, Other, was a finalist for the Bellwether Prize. The former Executive Director of the Equity Institute, a national diversity consulting firm, she is also a frequent NPR commentator and print columnist.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Elaine on May 23, 2013

Mama's Child honestly surprised me. It has such a in depth look at the relationship between a mother and daughter. All relationships between parent and child have some strain here and there but I never thought about the conflicts that could arise from a family being two races. And I never thought ab......more

Goodreads review by Terra on May 18, 2013

Mama' Child is a moving story of a bi-racial couple and the family they create. Elizabeth and Soloman met in the turbulent 50's. Elizabeth had left her home in the north to move to the south and teach black children, what she didn't expect was to lose her heart to the smooth talking musician fightin......more

Goodreads review by Book Preview Review on April 27, 2013

Book Description: “A stunning tale about the deeply entrenched conflicts between a white mother and her biracial daughter. Mama’s Child is a story of an idealistic young white woman who traveled to the American South as a civil rights worker, fell in love with an African American man, and started a f......more

Goodreads review by Sophie on April 25, 2013

Thanks to goodreads First Reads for the free copy of Joan Steinau Lester's Mama's Child. I am amazed at how captivating this mother-daughter story was. Steinau Lester writes so convincingly for both sides of the story - from mother Liz's love, devotion, and heartbreak, to Ruby's teenage tantrums (to......more

Goodreads review by Read In Colour on November 17, 2013

I gave it a 3, but it really only deserves a 2.5.......more