Here are 100 books that Liberating Motherhood fans have personally recommended if you like
Liberating Motherhood.
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My passion started as a personal quest in my twenties, struggling with my relationship with my own mother. When my daughter was born, I knew that I could not repeat the difficult dynamics between my mother and I. What started as a personal quest to understand the underlying dynamics between mothers and daughters quickly grew into a professional quest. Today, I have worked as a mother-daughter therapist with thousands of mothers and daughters of all ages and from different countries and cultures and have developed the Mother-Daughter Attachment® model that helps therapists and mothers and daughters uncover the hidden dynamics in their relationship and create a roadmap for change.
Mothers are too often blamed for their children’s and adult daughters’ problems. I regard Paula Caplan’s book as the quintessential text on understanding how patriarchy blames mothers and how mother-blaming harms mothers, women, and the mother-daughter relationship. Paula exposes the myths surrounding motherhood – revealing that there is no such thing as a “perfect mother.”
My passion started as a personal quest in my twenties, struggling with my relationship with my own mother. When my daughter was born, I knew that I could not repeat the difficult dynamics between my mother and I. What started as a personal quest to understand the underlying dynamics between mothers and daughters quickly grew into a professional quest. Today, I have worked as a mother-daughter therapist with thousands of mothers and daughters of all ages and from different countries and cultures and have developed the Mother-Daughter Attachment® model that helps therapists and mothers and daughters uncover the hidden dynamics in their relationship and create a roadmap for change.
Patriarchy has silenced women for generations, and in my first book, I uncover how women have been taught to “play nice” and be “care-givers” rather than “care-receivers.” Uncovering women’s emotional reality, I expose the culture of female service and how no one is looking after mothers, not even mothers themselves. This book provides exercises to help women claim their voice, needs, and rights in all of their relationships.
"The Silent Female Scream" teaches "how to believe that as a woman you have the right to be heard, valued and respected, and to know that anything less is just not okay." Through case studies and discussion, the author exposes that women's sense of self-worth and entitlement to speak their needs, especially in relationships, is an area that feminism has ignored to its peril. By looking at the legacy of emotional silence that many women have inherited from long before grandmother's day, she warns that emotional silence damages the mother-daughter relationship, women's relationships with themselves and each other, and their…
I'm a stage and television actress who, after getting married and having two children, turned to writing in my forties as my “second act”. I started writing about being a mom in Hollywood, and being raised by a mom who was—well, nuts. For years I dined out on crazy stories of my childhood: breakfasting on cold, half-eaten hors d'oeuvres strewn across our Park Avenue room from my crazy mom's all-night cocktail parties, falling asleep on banquets at nightclubs, skipping school to sneak into a swanky hotel in London and meet the Osmonds. The final result was my memoir, Chanel Bonfire. I believe it has the power to inspire and give hope, as well as entertain.
I’m a big believer in self-help books. This was recommended to me by a therapist who basically saved my life, navigating me through a very difficult time in my life in my twenties. The author, Victoria Secunda, breaks down all the different dysfunctional types of mothers, with chapters titled “The Avenger”, “The Doormat”, “The Critic”, in an easy-to-understand way. Reading this book helped me “diagnose” my mother, who never took responsibility for her mental illness, always blaming her behavior on her kids or others. This book helped me to understand her more fully, perhaps even feel compassion for her. I often recommend it to anyone who, like me, has or had a troubled relationship with their mother.
“A book of great value for every daughter and every mother; useful for sons, too.”—Benjamin Spock, M.D.
From the Introduction: The goal of this book is to help readers achieve that separation so that they can either find a way to be friends with their mothers, or at least recognize and accept that their mothers did the best they could—even if it wasn't “good enough”—and to stop blaming them. Among the issues to be covered:
• To understand how a daughter's attachment to her mother—more so than her relationship with her father—colors all her other relationships, and to analyze why…
My passion started as a personal quest in my twenties, struggling with my relationship with my own mother. When my daughter was born, I knew that I could not repeat the difficult dynamics between my mother and I. What started as a personal quest to understand the underlying dynamics between mothers and daughters quickly grew into a professional quest. Today, I have worked as a mother-daughter therapist with thousands of mothers and daughters of all ages and from different countries and cultures and have developed the Mother-Daughter Attachment® model that helps therapists and mothers and daughters uncover the hidden dynamics in their relationship and create a roadmap for change.
Losing your mother is devastating especially when a daughter is young. I’ve found that Hope Edelman’s book is a go-to book for daughters who have lost their mother and for daughters whose mother may be alive but unable to emotionally connect. Loss comes in many forms and this book helps daughters on their healing journey.
Ask any woman whose mother has died, and she will tell you that she is irrevocably altered, as deeply changed by her mother's death as she was by her mother's life. Although a mother's mortality is inevitable, no book had discussed the profound, lasting, and far-reaching effects of this loss- until Motherless Daughters , which became an instant classic. Twenty years later, it is still the book that women of all ages look to for comfort and understanding when their mothers die, and the book that they continue to press into each other's hands.Building on interviews with hundreds of mother-loss…
I am a professor of history at College of DuPage, a community college outside of Chicago. Growing up in New York City and rural Vermont in the 1980s and 1990s around people who questioned everything made me think a lot about how and why the social world is organized in such an obviously unjust and irrational way. I have tried to understand the development of this organization ever since.
This is the autobiography of one of the men hanged for the bombing at Chicago’s Haymarket that took place during the strikes for the eight-hour day that started on May 1, 1886.
He was born in Texas and, after fighting for the Confederacy as a teenager, switched sides and became an activist for the Radical Republicans who defended the rights of the freed people. When Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow was being built, Parsons was driven out of the South and went to Chicago. He came to see the exploitation of workers in the North as a new form of slavery – and the police as a key instrument in the hands of employers to maintain that new wage slavery.
In this work, written just days before he was executed, Parsons developed an early critique of the police and the entire modern system of law, which he saw as inextricably…
"Autobiography" from Albert Parsons. American radical socialist activist, hanged under doubtful circumstances following a bomb attack on police at the Haymarket Riot (1848-1887).
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. His story is autobiographical: the story of a different kind of male hero, a genderqueer person's tale. It follows the author from his debut as an eighth grader in Los Alamos, New Mexico until his unorthodox coming out at the age of twenty-one on the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque.
Leslie Feinberg’s story is a powerful response to the notion that simply discarding sexist gender expectations ought to be enough. Feinberg’s main character Jess was still a young adult when modern feminism exploded onto the scene in the 1970s but Jess isn’t merely androgynous or resisting sexist limitations. She’s butch.
Published in 1993, this brave, original novel is considered to be the finest account ever written of the complexities of a transgendered existence.
Woman or man? That’s the question that rages like a storm around Jess Goldberg, clouding her life and her identity. Growing up differently gendered in a blue--collar town in the 1950’s, coming out as a butch in the bars and factories of the prefeminist ’60s, deciding to pass as a man in order to survive when she is left without work or a community in the early ’70s. This powerful, provocative and deeply moving novel sees Jess…
I’m the author of two novels, both of which explore the impact of the digital age on my characters’ lives. I’m old enough to have experienced being a teenager before the Internet but young enough to have used it all my adult life. I can’t forget the before-times! While I’ve benefitted a lot from what the tech industry calls Web 2.0, I’m also really alive to the losses: social, economic, personal, and existential. From our work lives to our communities to our health and sex lives–nowhere is free from technology’s influence. We are living in fascinating and dangerous times.
I love this book, and it caused a big splash on publication.
The novel takes a highly individual look at one woman’s twin obsessions–a man she is having an affair with and his sometime lover, a woman whom the narrator obsessively follows via social media. On the one hand, it’s a story of infatuation and obsession, about how you can lose sight of yourself in the desire for another. On the other, it’s about how social media and capitalism can combine to diminish us all.
I thoroughly enjoyed it–it’s dark, racy and thought-provoking.
“A fast, fizzing cherry bomb of a debut” (The Observer [UK]) about power, intimacy, and the internet
I stalk a woman on the internet who is sleeping with the same man as I am.
Sheena Patel’s incandescent first novel begins with the unnamed narrator describing her involvement in a seemingly unequal romantic relationship. With a clear and unforgiving eye, she dissects the behavior of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world. I’m a Fan offers a devastating critique of class, social media, patriarchy’s…
When I started writing The Majesties, I wanted the narrative to be a continual excavation of secrets, one after the other. This sort of multi-layered story has always intrigued me and my fascination with it has influenced all my written work so far. I am particularly fascinated by books where characters unconsciously keep secrets from themselves, and where the line between the “real” and the fantastic is blurred beyond recognition. Sometimes it’s not just about solving a mystery, but articulating its mysteriousness—giving it flesh and bone, stitching its parts together, and bringing it to life through words.
I read this book late at night while recovering from jetlag, and it was either the perfect book to read late at night while my mind’s guard was down or the worst book to do this with. The stories are hilarious, but also often horrifying, and ingeniously fantastic. A bunny lamp that curses whoever touches it; a woman who gets pregnant from taking birth control pills; a boy who bleeds gold when he drinks his sister’s blood—these stories are sure to keep your brain lit up long after your head has hit the pillow.
Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung.
Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.
Anton Hur's translation skilfully captures the way Chung's prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous.
Growing up as a total tomboy in the early 90s, I naturally gravitated toward traditionally male-dominated sports, jobs, and hobbies throughout my life. Despite encountering instances of sexual harassment and sexism along the way, I had strong role models and books with fierce main characters to turn to for support. I have always been passionate about women claiming their power, which is why I love writing about and reading stories that center on this theme.
What I loved most about this book was how strongly it made me feel—sad, angry, powerful. I am in awe of Tehlor Kay Mejia’s writing. They crafted a richly developed world and forged nuanced characters like Dani and Carmen, whose romance was perfect and heart-wrenching.
The book has a lot to say, addressing issues like immigration and misogyny with depth and authenticity, making it a feminist, Latinx, and sapphic masterpiece that I can’t help but adore and recommend.
"We Set the Dark on Fire burns bright. It will light the way for a new generation of rebels and lovers." -NPR
"Mejia pens a compelling, gripping story that mirrors real world issues of immigration and equality." -Buzzfeed
Five starred reviews!!
In this daring and romantic fantasy debut perfect for fans of The Handmaid's Tale and Latinx authors Zoraida Cordova and Anna-Marie McLemore, society wife-in-training Dani has a great awakening after being recruited by rebel spies and falling for her biggest rival.
At the Medio School for Girls, distinguished young women are trained for one of two roles in their…
I’m a non-binary, neurodivergent, queer speculative fiction writer who loves a good revolution story—whether that’s a quiet, personal revolution, or a big, explosive overthrowing of the 1%. These books have helped me create my own odd fictional worlds as well as space for my psyche to survive in. I wanted to represent a variety of perspectives here from writers who are subversive, LGBTQ, BIPOC, and, for lack of a better word, brave. As a university writing teacher, I believe that the written word holds power and drives us closer to a utopia, or at least towards a more colorful future community where all are welcome and supported.
The only male author on this list, Coleman Dowell’s Southern Gothic tale is included because it contains some of the most nuanced writing of female characters I’ve ever encountered. Too Much Flesh tells the narrative of a well-endowed farmer named Jim, his petite wife Effie, and a young man, Jabez, whose mutual obsession with Jim leads to, well, something of a frenetic climax. A story within a story, the tale is told to us by a “spinster schoolteacher” (the book was published in 1977), Miss Ethel, who channels her sexual repression into this story of the farmer.
Neither Miss Ethel nor Jim’s wife, Effie, come across as one-dimensional—they feel and act like real people on the page. Dowell himself was gay and deftly handles this queer narrative in a way that is somehow both quiet and stunning, and makes an interesting case study for the time period and genre. And…
Coleman Dowell's "Southern Gothic" is a novel about sexual repression. Miss Ethel, a spinster school teacher, decides to write what she calls a "perverse tale" about one of her former students, a Kentucky farmer named Jim Cummins. Endowing him with unnaturally large genitals, she spins a tawdry tale of his frustrated relationship with his petite wife. Expressing all the bitterness of "an old woman's revenge," Miss Ethel's tale is nonetheless a sensitive depiction of rural life in the early years of World War II.Dowell's masterful use of the tale-within-a-tale to explore psychological states makes "Too Much Flesh and Jabez" a…
