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Michele Filgate
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What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence Kindle Edition

by Michele Filgate (Editor) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,025 ratings
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“You will devour these beautifully written—and very important—tales of honesty, pain, and resilience” (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls) from fifteen brilliant writers who explore how what we don’t talk about with our mothers affects us, for better or for worse.

As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. This gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers.

Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything.

As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” There’s relief in acknowledging how what we couldn’t say for so long is a way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves.

Contributions by Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.
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  1. Print length
    289 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Simon & Schuster
  5. Publication date
    April 30, 2019
  6. File size
    1957 KB
  7. Page Flip
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  8. Word Wise
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

“These essays, each one exceptional on its own, encompass both love and writing at their most vulnerable, and could power entire cities with their electricity.”--Booklist, starred review


"Fifteen essayists—many luminaries—write unflinchingly about their mothers...Each one of these intimate and gut-wrenching essays reaches beyond itself to forge connections with readers."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"The essays all address the authors' relationships with their mothers in stories to be savored but not necessarily read in one sitting. …beautifully composed."--Library Journal, starred review

"A fascinating set of reflections on what it is like to be a son or daughter… the range of stories and styles represented in this collection makes for rich and rewarding reading."--Publishers Weekly


"These are the hardest stories in the world to tell, but they are told with absolute grace. You will devour these beautifully written—and very important— tales of honesty, pain, and resilience.”--Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love

"By turns raw, tender, bold and wise, the essays in this anthology explore writers’ relationships with their mothers. Kudos to Michele Filgate for this riveting contribution to a vital conversation.”--Claire Messud, bestselling author of The Burning Girl

"Fifteen literary luminaries, including Filgate herself, probe how silence is never even remotely golden until it is mined for the haunting truths that lie within our most primal relationships-with our mothers. Unsettling, brave, sometimes hilarious and sometimes scorching enough to wreck your heart, these essays, about love or the terrifying lack of it, don’t just smash the silence; they let the light in, bearing witness with grace, understanding and writing so gorgeous you’ll be memorizing lines."--Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You

“This collection of storytelling constellated around mothers and silence will break your heart and then gently give it back to you stitched together with what we carry in our bodies our whole lives.”--Lidia Yuknavitch, national bestselling author of The Misfit's Manifesto

"This is a rare collection that has the power to break silences. I am in awe of the talent Filgate has assembled here; each of these fifteen heavyweight writers offer a truly profound argument for why words matter, and why unspoken words may matter even more."--Garrard Conley, New York Times bestselling author of Boy Erased

"Who better to discuss one of our greatest shared surrialities -- that we are all, once and forever, for better or worse, someone's child -- than this murderer's row of writers? The mothers in this collection are terrible, wonderful, flawed, human, tragic, triumphant, complex, simple, baffling, supportive, deranged, heartbreaking and heartbroken. Sometimes all at once. I'll be thinking about this book, and stewing over it, and teaching from it, for a long time."--Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers

About the Author

Michele Filgate's work has appeared in Longreads; The Washington Post; the Los Angeles Times; The Boston Globe; The Paris Review Daily; Tin House; Gulf Coast; O, The Oprah Magazine; BuzzFeed; Refinery29; and many other publications. Currently, she is an MFA student at NYU, where she is the recipient of the Stein Fellowship. She's a contributing editor at Literary Hub and teaches at the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop and Catapult. What My Mother and I Don't Talk About is her first book.

Soneela Nankani, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, is a classically trained actress, voice-over artist, and singer who has had roles in film and on television. She has worked with the award-winning Sojourn Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and the Kansas City Repertory Theatre.



Cynthia Farrell, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, is a singer and voice actor best known for her roll as Catalina in the video games Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. She has also performed off Broadway and has released a number of records.



When he was seven, David Sadzin's first grade teacher gave him a paragraph to read out loud. She interrupted him halfway to proclaim him The Ringmaster in his class's musical extravaganza about the circus. He's been using his voice to get out of trouble ever since. After a few intense years on New York's stages, performing traditional and experimental theater, improv, and sketch comedy, he's now settled comfortably in front of the mic in his home studio in Brooklyn.

Janina Edwards, an Earphone Award-winning narrator, is a graduate of the acting program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MD6JZZ9
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (April 30, 2019)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 30, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1957 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 289 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,025 ratings

About the author

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Michele Filgate

Michele Filgate

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Michele Filgate is a contributing editor at Literary Hub and the editor of What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, an anthology based on her Longreads essay. Currently, she is an M.F.A. student at NYU, where she is the recipient of the Stein Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Longreads, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Refinery29, Slice, The Paris Review Daily, Tin House, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, Salon, Interview Magazine, Buzzfeed, The Barnes & Noble Review, Poets & Writers, CNN.com, Fine Books & Collections Magazine, DAME Magazine, The Brooklyn Quarterly, Time Out New York, People, The Daily Beast, O, The Oprah Magazine, Men's Journal, Vulture, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Star Tribune, The Quarterly Conversation, The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications. She teaches creative nonfiction for The Sackett Street Writers' Workshop and Catapult and is the founder of the Red Ink literary series. In 2016, Brooklyn Magazine named her one of "The 100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture." She’s a former board member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
1,025 global ratings
Raw. Real. Relatable.
5 Stars
Raw. Real. Relatable.
I’m not sure there are words to adequately describe the impact of this book. I picked it up and could not put it back down, I finished it in less than a day. If you have a complex relationship with your mother, enjoy reading about the realm of mental health, and/or memoirs, I HIGHLY recommend reading this. I’d love for their to be another collection released.
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Top reviews from the United States

ray
5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, good read if you’ve struggled with a relationship with your mother before
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2023
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In my opinion, the setup of the book is what made the entirety of the read so impactful for me. For the respective authors to condense their relations with their mothers in only a few pages left me stuck with a number of emotions. I felt more connected to certain authors but that was to be expected. Overall I throughly enjoyed the book and would recommend it for those of us who share similar stories.

side note: not all of the stories are bad or “trauma”ridden, some share beautiful stories of maternal love
5 people found this helpful
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Shelby
5.0 out of 5 stars Well-Done
Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2024
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I love the versatility in this book. Definitely recommend to others.
One person found this helpful
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Ashley Tidwell
4.0 out of 5 stars A good hard emotional read about surviving motherhood
Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2019
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Mothers, mothering, relationships with mothers, it’s all hard. It’s hard to process, live through, survive sometimes even if you’ve got the best mother who ever lived. It’s a relationship that you grow up with in more ways than one as it’s constantly changing. This was a good, relatable, sad and truthful read in a way I can’t be about my own mother. I appreciate the emotional labor others were willing to go through that I won’t touch personally.
6 people found this helpful
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paige
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2023
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Ordered this book after it popped up on my suggested. Since it’s a book full of essays from different writers, it’s one of those that you can pick up every once and a while to read. You definitely don’t have to commit to reading the whole thing before moving on to something else. Loved the stories and the messages behind them. Great read.
2 people found this helpful
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Puffers
3.0 out of 5 stars Ok
Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2022
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I liked the idea of this book but it was not what I expected. A few stories were good and others were boring and confusing. A few I had to skip because the authors didn’t make any sense to me.
3 people found this helpful
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Teachernut
5.0 out of 5 stars Mother and Child
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2019
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There are as many mother/child relationships as there are mothers and children, and each is unique to that child. My memories of my relationship with my mother,are different than what my siblings memories are because we come to the table with our own expectations at our own time in family history. In this collection of essays edited by Michele Filgate, I can connect to what many of what these authors are expressing. One of the essayists, Brandon Taylor writes, "I couldn't leave space for her to be a person. I think ultimately, other people aren't real to us until they are suffering or gone. That's when the imagination begins to work, trying to sort things out, trying to get them right, to understand them." That certainly has been true for me. It has been ll years since my mom died, and although I know in my heart she loved me and I loved her, I don't know that she knew how to love me, nor did I know how to best love her.In Leslie Jamison's essay, she writes, "It allowed me to see that both she and I have always been more complicated than the binaries I've constructed for us to inhabit...we get so used to the stories we tell about ourselves." I believe each of us is a story, other people add to mine and so do I.My story about my mother is still and probably will always be evolving.
21 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Hit you right in the feels
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2023
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To see so many different views on a relationship between mother and child is amazing. The emotions, the honesty, the pain. I loved every essay.
One person found this helpful
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Maria L
4.0 out of 5 stars Good so far
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2022
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Very good book!
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Top reviews from other countries

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Adriana Reyes
5.0 out of 5 stars If you have the opportunity please read it!
Reviewed in Canada on December 11, 2023
Verified Purchase
The product arrived on time. But the content is what is important, I liked a lot the book. Motherhood is a vast thing and can be experienced in many many ways. Some stories moved me to tears and others make me laugh, overall I learned a lot.
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FMT
2.0 out of 5 stars Is this a fluke?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2024
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I was so looking forward to this book believing it was a number of essays by different writers regarding relationships with their mothers. Instead I have a novel called One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle that I have already read! I thought maybe I misunderstood and there is a series of these books but I don't think so. I enjoyed it the first time but do not intend to read it again. So disappointed I did not receive what had been promoted obviously incorrectly.
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Paola
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing read
Reviewed in Mexico on July 27, 2019
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So many essays had me in tears but it was awesome to read from another person's experience, I really recommend it, plus, the delivery was super fast and in great shape, no complaints.
One person found this helpful
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Elizabeth
3.0 out of 5 stars libro maltratado
Reviewed in Mexico on April 29, 2024
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La primera vez que leí el libro me encantó pero como lo leía en todas partes se dañó un poco, decidí comprarlo aquí para simplemente poder guardarlo como trofeo y de accesorio, pero llegó maltratado 😭
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Elizabeth
3.0 out of 5 stars libro maltratado
Reviewed in Mexico on April 29, 2024
La primera vez que leí el libro me encantó pero como lo leía en todas partes se dañó un poco, decidí comprarlo aquí para simplemente poder guardarlo como trofeo y de accesorio, pero llegó maltratado 😭
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Emma R
1.0 out of 5 stars Came in used condition
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 2, 2021
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Book came in what looked like used condition, the cover was scuffed and lifting at parts; unsatisfied.
The book itself is eye opening! Just the delivery of the product that disappointed
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