It is easy to feel frustrated by the actions of Bennett’s characters, but these flawed, nuanced people stayed with me long after I finished the book, as I tried to work out the motivations for their behaviour.Īs 17-year-old Nadia escapes to college and moves on with her life, the people in her home town stay in the same place. The differences in how she and Luke are treated are anger-inducing (although Luke deals with his own issues around masculinity). With girls seen as the keepers of a family’s reputation, Nadia bears the brunt of collective judgment well into her 20s. The Mothers’ black conservative Christianity is a punishing atmosphere for a girl to grow up in. Through the words of almost every character in the novel are conveyed incredibly strong messages about guilt, shame, what is expected of women’s bodies, and what happens when black women do not perform as they should. Exemplifying that oppressive atmosphere are the watchful eyes of the community’s mothers, who interject into the novel’s events in a Greek-style chorus, ever judgmental. Set in Bennett’s native southern California, The Mothers perfectly captures the constraints of a small town, where anyone’s business is everyone’s business. In the absence of their own mothers, they seek out a surrogate – sometimes finding her in one another. Their lives are indelibly marked by trauma – a mother’s suicide, family abuse, and a career-ending sports injury. Set in opposition to each other by their community (Aubrey is pious, plain and family-centred, while Nadia is hedonistic, disconnected and focused on education), Nadia and Aubrey are unlikely best friends.Īpproaching adulthood in a socially conservative black Christian community, each begins the novel feeling lost.

Instead, we trace the coming-of-age journeys of three teenagers: Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey. With the uncomplicated ease only a black writer can manage, everyone in the book is black unless described otherwise.Īlthough Nadia’s abortion is not easily compartmentalised, The Mothers is much more than a cautionary tale about teenage sex. It makes all the points it needs to without being obvious. The Mothers isn’t explicitly feminist, in the same way that it isn’t explicitly a novel about “the black experience”.

But she doesn’t pretend it never happened. Nadia doesn’t want to be pregnant, so she has an abortion, and gets on with her life. The contentious issue surrounds the novel, and it’s a credit to Bennett that it’s dealt with so carefully in her narrative. That abortion could negatively affect a woman’s life in the long term is a narrative usually reserved for the most rabid of anti-choice activists.

The mothers by brit bennett