92 books like Revolutionary Mothering

By Alexis Pauline Gumbs (editor), China Martens (editor), Mai'a Williams (editor)

Here are 92 books that Revolutionary Mothering fans have personally recommended if you like Revolutionary Mothering. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood

Anna Malaika Tubbs Author Of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

From my list on Black motherhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

Anna Malaika Tubbs is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. She is also a Cambridge Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a BA in Anthropology, Anna received a Master’s from the University of Cambridge in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies. Outside of the academy, she is an educator and DEI consultant. She lives with her husband, Michael Tubbs, and their son Michael Malakai.

Anna's book list on Black motherhood

Anna Malaika Tubbs Why did Anna love this book?

This book is a beautiful combination of personal narrative and social commentary. McClain takes you through many of the complicated emotions of raising Black children in the United States while also leaving her reader with a sense of sisterhood and support. It’s a must when it comes to understanding the current landscape Black mothers are facing.

By Dani McClain,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked We Live for the We as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A warm, wise, and urgent guide to parenting in uncertain times, from a longtime reporter on race, reproductive health, and politics

In We Live for the We, first-time mother Dani McClain sets out to understand how to raise her daughter in what she, as a black woman, knows to be an unjust -- even hostile -- society. Black women are more likely to die during pregnancy or birth than any other race; black mothers must stand before television cameras telling the world that their slain children were human beings. What, then, is the best way to keep fear at bay…


Book cover of Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy, and Childbirth

Anna Malaika Tubbs Author Of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

From my list on Black motherhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

Anna Malaika Tubbs is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. She is also a Cambridge Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a BA in Anthropology, Anna received a Master’s from the University of Cambridge in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies. Outside of the academy, she is an educator and DEI consultant. She lives with her husband, Michael Tubbs, and their son Michael Malakai.

Anna's book list on Black motherhood

Anna Malaika Tubbs Why did Anna love this book?

A crucial read not only for understanding the unique obstacles facing Black birthing parents but also for celebrating the work of organizers who have fought for our reproductive justice. This book explains how key moments in history have led to where we are today and fills gaps of understanding that many have when it comes to Black maternal health.

By Julia Oparah (editor), Alicia Bonaparte (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Birthing Justice as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

There is a global crisis in maternal health care for black women. In the United States, black women are over three times more likely to perish from pregnancy-related complications than white women; their babies are half as likely to survive the first year. Many black women experience policing, coercion, and disempowerment during pregnancy and childbirth and are disconnected from alternative birthing traditions. This book places black women's voices at the center of the debate on what should be done to fix the broken maternity system and foregrounds black women's agency in the emerging birth justice movement. Mixing scholarly, activist, and…


Book cover of Rise Up Singing: Black Women Writers on Motherhood

Anna Malaika Tubbs Author Of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

From my list on Black motherhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

Anna Malaika Tubbs is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. She is also a Cambridge Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a BA in Anthropology, Anna received a Master’s from the University of Cambridge in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies. Outside of the academy, she is an educator and DEI consultant. She lives with her husband, Michael Tubbs, and their son Michael Malakai.

Anna's book list on Black motherhood

Anna Malaika Tubbs Why did Anna love this book?

This anthology brings together diverse Black women’s voices to discuss motherhood, they range from mothers who celebrate their role to women who ask why motherhood is cast upon all of us as a necessary step, they explore the joys as well as some of the painful realities of loss and postpartum depression. Reading these stories from varied perspectives in short essay formats makes it approachable and allows you to move through it at a pace that is comfortable for any reader.

By Cecelie Berry,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Rise Up Singing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From a dazzling array of well-known African American women, short fiction, poems, and personal essays that describe with warmth and humor their experiences as mothers and as daughters.

A sparkling anthology devoted to exploring the lives of African American mothers, Rise Up Singing presents the stories and reflections of such beloved and respected artists, journalists, and authors as Alice Walker, Faith Ringgold, Marita Golden, Martha Southgate, Tananarive Due, Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Deborah Roberts, Rita Dove, and others. It features original and previously published writings, organized by editor Cecelie Berry by themes—mothering, work, family, children, community, and love—that illuminate the…


Book cover of In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

Anna Malaika Tubbs Author Of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

From my list on Black motherhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

Anna Malaika Tubbs is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. She is also a Cambridge Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a BA in Anthropology, Anna received a Master’s from the University of Cambridge in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies. Outside of the academy, she is an educator and DEI consultant. She lives with her husband, Michael Tubbs, and their son Michael Malakai.

Anna's book list on Black motherhood

Anna Malaika Tubbs Why did Anna love this book?

This anthology of some of Walker’s most powerful works with a focus on discovering ourselves through studying those who came before us is both incredibly informative and emotional. It explores motherhood not only through the biological role but also in a sense of community mothering and foremothers. There is much to learn about our present by examining lessons laid out for us by generations past.

By Alice Walker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple, Alice Walker's collection of essays ranging in topics from personal to political. "Thoughtful, intelligent, resonant musings." — Kirkus Reviews

In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walker speaks out as a black woman, writer, mother, and feminist. Among the thirty-six pieces are essays about other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring childhood injury and her daughter’s healing words.


Book cover of The Part That Burns

Jennifer Lang Author Of Places We Left Behind: A Memoir-in-Miniature

From my list on home and why it isn’t obvious for everyone.

Why am I passionate about this?

For my first 18 years, I slept in the same room (opposite my parents) in the same house (116 Monticello Avenue) in the same city (Piedmont) in the same state (CA) in the same country (USA), but soon after leaving for college in Evanston, IL, I pined for elsewhere and ended up peripatetic. That peripateticness plagued me, as a woman/wife/mother. While growing our family, my French husband and I moved: Israel to France to California to New York to Israel to New York to Israel. Finally, in my early fifties, I understood home is more about who you are than where you live. 

Jennifer's book list on home and why it isn’t obvious for everyone

Jennifer Lang Why did Jennifer love this book?

The Part That Burns is not a linear narrative but a memoir in fragments. Each essay or chapter is different, interesting, engaging like scattered pieces of a puzzle that the writer—and reader—are trying to put together.

It's about a childhood wrought with abuse and rejection, about trauma and epigenetics, home and roots. It's about a girl who grows up to become a teenager who becomes a young woman who becomes a wife and a mother and every step of the way, she yearns for what we all yearn for: acceptance and love.

My memoir is as slim and sparse as Ouellette’s and some might consider my chronological story as fragmented because of its tiny chapters and missing connective tissue from one chapter to the next.  

By Jeannine Ouellette,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Part That Burns as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"I love this book and am grateful it is in the world." —Dorothy Allison, New York Times best-selling author of Bastard Out of Carolina and Cavedweller
"Simply beautiful. Precisely imagined, poetically structured, compelling, and vivid." —Joyce Carol Oates
"A textured remembrance of a traumatic childhood that also offers affecting moments of beauty." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

In her fiercely beautiful memoir, Jeannine Ouellette recollects fragments of her life and arranges them elliptically to witness each piece as torn and whole, as something more than itself. Caught between the dramatic landscapes of Lake Superior and Casper Mountain, between her stepfather’s groping…


Book cover of The New Don't Blame Mother: Mending the Mother-Daughter Relationship

Rosjke Hasseldine Author Of The Mother-Daughter Puzzle: A New Generational Understanding of the Mother-Daughter Relationship

From my list on to read about the mother-daughter relationship.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Rosjke's book list on to read about the mother-daughter relationship

Rosjke Hasseldine Why did Rosjke love this book?

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.” 

By Paula Caplan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The New Don't Blame Mother as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


Book cover of Fruitful: A Real Mother in the Modern World

Katherine Ellison Author Of Mothers And Murderers: A True Story Of Love, Lies, Obsession ... and Second Chances

From my list on mothers writing shamelessly about motherhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

Motherhood blindsided me. I was 37 and living my childhood career dream as a foreign correspondent when I serendipitously smelled the head of a friend’s newborn. Next thing I knew, I was up all night singing old Beatles' songs to a baby who needed to eat every half hour. Amazed by the power of rudimentary biology to reshape my conscious experience, I couldn’t help but start writing about it, first in essays and then in two shameless motherhood books of my own: The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes You Smarter (heavily inspired by Sarah Hrdy) and Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention (about sharing an ADHD diagnosis with my son). 

Katherine's book list on mothers writing shamelessly about motherhood

Katherine Ellison Why did Katherine love this book?

Beginning in 1970, with “Up the Sandbox,” Roiphe was part of the first wave of shameless motherly truth-tellers. There are few more truer sentences than her acknowledgment that “feminism, despite its vast accomplishments, has not cured me of motherhood” in this poignant and prescient book about the impossible expectations that continue to bedevil working mothers.

By Anne Richardson Roiphe,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fruitful as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The author of the best-selling novel Up the Sandbox offers a critical account of the feminist stance on marriage and motherhood, arguing for renewed support for the needs of working women trying to bring up children. 40,000 first printing. Tour.


Book cover of Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection

Jay Belsky Author Of The Origins of You: How Childhood Shapes Later Life

From my list on development from childhood to middle age.

Why am I passionate about this?

It was almost by accident that I became who I turned out to be as a professional, a developmental scientist interested in how early-life experiences shape who we become. Had someone asked me when I graduated from high school what were the chances of me becoming a scientist and teacher, I would have answered “zero, zero”! During my now 40+ year academic career I've come to appreciate how complex the many forces are that shape who we become. There's no nature without nurture and no nurture without nature. This emergent realization led me to learn about and study many aspects of developmental experience, like parenting and peer relations, and the role of genetics and evolution.

Jay's book list on development from childhood to middle age

Jay Belsky Why did Jay love this book?

Given my interests in nature and nurture, what I find especially fascinating is “the nature of nurture”. By this I mean how Darwinian natural selection has shaped the way our species rears its children and the effects such care has on them.

This book by a world-famous anthropologist beautifully, informative, and insightfully reveals how evolution has made us who we are as parents, people capable of unconditional love but by no means always dispensing it, sometimes the exact opposite—and why that is the case.

By Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Mother Nature as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection


Book cover of Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing, and Slavery in Jamaica

Trevor Burnard Author Of Jamaica in the Age of Revolution

From my list on Jamaica during the period of slavery.

Why am I passionate about this?

Trevor Burnard is Wilberforce Professor of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull and author of four books and many articles on eighteenth-century Jamaica. He has recently reviewed 34 books just published on Jamaica in “`Wi Lickle but Wi Tallawah’: Writing Jamaica into the Atlantic World, 1655-1834 Reviews in American History 49 (2021), 168-86.

Trevor's book list on Jamaica during the period of slavery

Trevor Burnard Why did Trevor love this book?

Slavery was brutal in eighteenth-century Jamaica, mostly due to how hard enslaved people were worked as sugar workers. That hard work had massive consequences for enslaved women’s fertility. Early abolitionists used the inability of enslaved populations to naturally reproduce as an indictment of the plantation system. Planters, belatedly, tried to institute policies that helped pregnant women but their desire for profit usually overwhelmed their concern for maternal comfort. It meant that enslaved women themselves took the lead in forcing planters and officials to do something to make pregnancy endurable and infant mortality less extreme than before abolitionism began.

By Sasha Turner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Contested Bodies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It is often thought that slaveholders only began to show an interest in female slaves' reproductive health after the British government banned the importation of Africans into its West Indian colonies in 1807. However, as Sasha Turner shows in this illuminating study, for almost thirty years before the slave trade ended, Jamaican slaveholders and doctors adjusted slave women's labor, discipline, and health care to increase birth rates and ensure that infants lived to become adult workers. Although slaves' interests in healthy pregnancies and babies aligned with those of their masters, enslaved mothers, healers, family, and community members distrusted their owners'…


Book cover of That Kind of Mother

Hadley Leggett Author Of All They Ask Is Everything

From my list on explore what it means to be a mother.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a mom of three who's struggled to find a balance between parenting, career, and meeting my own needs, I'm intensely interested in the way our society views motherhood. There are so many different ways to become a mother and so many different opinions about what makes a “good mom.” On the one hand, our culture has incredibly high expectations and seems to judge women no matter what choices they make. At the same time, we don’t offer struggling moms basic supports like low-cost childcare, mental health benefits, or paid maternity leave. I love reading novels that recognize this paradox and take a generous view of the many definitions of motherhood.

Hadley's book list on explore what it means to be a mother

Hadley Leggett Why did Hadley love this book?

This book describes the intensity of new motherhood so accurately that I was surprised to realize it was written by a man! It brought back memories of the newborn days with my own three kids, when I was drowning in exhaustion, anxiety, and breastmilk but also felt overwhelmed with joy and love. 

When the main character decides to step in and adopt a second baby—the child of her nanny, who dies in childbirth—we get to see how mothering is both the same and different when your baby doesn’t share your genes or even your skin color. I loved how the book doesn’t give easy answers to the sticky questions around transracial adoption but instead leaves the reader pondering. I read this one years ago, and I’m still thinking about it!

By Rumaan Alam,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked That Kind of Mother as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NAMED A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018 BY:
Buzzfeed • The Boston Globe •  The Millions • InStyle • Southern Living • Vogue • Popsugar • Kirkus • The Washington Post • Library Journal • Real Simple • NPR

“With his unerring eye for nuance and unsparing sense of irony, Rumaan Alam’s second novel is both heartfelt and thought-provoking.”
   — Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere

From the bestselling author of Leave the World Behind, a novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keep

Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in motherhood, women of color, and Black women?

Motherhood 53 books
Women Of Color 17 books
Black Women 29 books