We’re thrilled to announce that our April Book Club selection is
What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence, edited by Michele Filgate and forthcoming from Simon & Schuster on April 30, but available to Rumpus Book Club members in just a few weeks!
In the early 2000s, as an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took years for her to realize what she was actually trying to write about: the fracture this caused in her relationship with her mother. When her essay, “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About,” was published by Longreads in October of 2017, it went on to become one of the most popular Longreads exclusives of the year. The outpouring of responses gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers an intimate, therapeutic, and universally resonant look at our relationships with our mothers.
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 breaking the silence. Acknowledging what we couldn’t say for so long is one way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves.
“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
Contributors include 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.
Subscribe to the Rumpus Book Club by March 20 to join us in reading What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, culminating in an exclusive online discussion with editor Michele Filgate (and perhaps some surprise guests, too) about the book!
