Moving Novels About Mothers and Daughters

When Gish’s mother, Loo Shu-hsin, was born in China, she was expected to become a particular type of woman due to her parents’ wealth. However, Loo Shu-hsin’s father was barely impressed with her because he saw her gender as a hindrance. Despite her father’s antiquated philosophies, she sets her eyes on America with no intention of ever returning to China. It didn’t take long for Loo Shu-hsin to find someone similar to her. By the time Gish is born, their marriage is foundering, and she is confronted with a strong-willed, outspoken daughter distinctly reminiscent of herself. Get lost in this engrossing, blisteringly funny-sad autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship.

Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at 18 for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity. Kin centers around mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South.

Dive into this emotionally charged epistolary novel set in contemporary Philadelphia, centering around April as she struggles with balancing motherhood and living up to the expectations of her family. April lives with her family while trying to make it as a teen mother. As the pressure builds, April finds herself crumbling under societal expectations for women and the expectations of her Puerto Rican parents, who want her to be a model citizen. The White Hot takes the form of a letter from mother to daughter about a moment of abandonment that would stretch from ten days to ten years — an explanation, but not an apology.

When a mother claims her missing daughter is alive beneath a lake in a flooded valley, a marine biologist descends into a hidden underwater settlement where those who refused to leave have built a sealed-off world — and where the consequences of that choice are beginning to surface. Hypnotic and arresting, Underlake brings a poet’s attention to language, evoking the ethereal work of Marilynne Robinson, Lauren Groff, and Emily St. John Mandel and the imaginative brio of Margaret Atwood.  McCoy explores the American obsession with land, inheritance, and race, asking what we cling to when the world changes — and who gets erased in the name of preserving it.

Many aren’t aware of Jessie Redmon Fauset, one of the most pivotal figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Make no mistake, while Jessie was doing important and necessary work as the editor for The Crisis and its children’s publication, she, like most heroes, was imperfect. Her questionable affair with renowned Black intellectual, W.E.B. DuBois, caused a devastating rift between her and her stepmother. Her stepmother never held her tongue when it came to her disapproval, which put a strain on their relationship and deeply impacted Jessie.

Motherhood isn’t always linear, and this illuminating tale proves just that. Set in the pristine and lively Trinidad, Dawn makes the choice to retrace her life back to her teen years, which sends her on an emotional journey in an effort to find the daughter she gave up for adoption. Despite Dawn being a divorcee in her seasoned years with two adult sons, she still longs for the connection with her daughter. Her parents sent her away to Venezuela to have her baby in an effort to preserve her reputation. As Dawn uses social media to find her daughter, she must reckon with the pain she’s hidden all of these years.

Valeria Luiselli’s novel opens the morning a mother and her teenage daughter arrive in Sicily, during a summer of rapidly-changing winds, volcanic rumbles, and sudden tempests. While the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives together, her deeply intelligent, inquisitive daughter begins to take the reins of the story.  Beginning Middle End evolves into a road novel of exquisite tenderness. In their drive through Sicily, mother and daughter cross paths with the island’s migrants, storekeepers, and elders, but also its volcanoes, its winds and its waters. Warm, funny, and poetic, this novel is an ode to imagination and possibility in dark times.

This historical fiction is based on the author’s family story. Daughters of Shandong transports you back to 1948 China, where civil unrest spreads across China. But for the Ang family, a violent political society is not their main concern. They believe they are cursed because their household has not produced any sons as heirs. As the looming war comes closer to their doorstop, the women of the Ang family are abandoned as the rest seek safety and discard them as additional baggage. The Ang women suffer and thrive together as they use their wit to seek freedom. Daughters of Shandong is a hopeful, powerful story about the resilience of women in war; the enduring love between mothers, daughters, and sisters; and the sacrifices made to lift future generations.

For a more unconventional mother and daughter relationship, this book will warm your heart and make you laugh. Skye is a woman who stands on business. Sure, she’s unpredictable at times and can be unreliable as well as standoffish, but no matter what, she tries to get things done. But all that changes after a 12-year-old girl shows up in her life and introduces herself as her daughter. Now, Skye has to recalibrate her life to try to figure out how she can schedule being a mother to a pre-teen she barely knows, but may now responsible for.

It’s one thing to deal with your mother, but imagine the multigenerational drama that unfolds when you add your grandmother to the mix? It all started with Lila when she was just a toddler. She watched her father force her mother into a mental institution, which impacted her life severely. Now, as a successful editor and mom, her daughter resents her for putting her career over her daughter’s. But Lila has a lot of trauma to overcome, and before she does, her daughter will write a book loosely based on their family’s history. Spanning generations, and populated by complex, unforgettable characters, Like Mother, Like Mother is an exhilarating portrait of family, marriage, ambition, power, and the stories we inherit.

For readers who want to read novels that invoke magical realism into mother-daughter storytelling, you are going to want to add this to your TBR. In this family, tragedy and praise happen simuntenously on the same day. Ebun goes into labor and gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the same day as her cousin Monife’s funeral. Some believe that this means the family is cursed. This curse entails the Falodun women will never experience long-lasting love and men will always leave them. When Eniiyi grows up and meets a young man whom she is smitten with, she finds herself turning to the dark corners of Nigeria to find a solution to break the curse.

For readers who love a bit of charm and horror, here is a paranormal read filled with dark humor. When Abby and Ralph marry, Abby is thrilled at the opportunity to finally have the mother she never had. Eager to please, Abby is willing to do anything to please her aging mother-in-law, Laura. But when nobody is watching them, Laura terrorizes Abby as a cruel joke. When Laura takes her life, her ghost seems to loom over the newlywed couple, causing a depressing and volatile home environment, and causing the couple to build up mounds of stress. But Abby drums up a plan to please Laura’s ghost and Ralph’s sister while freeing them all from this matriarchal curse.

This mother-daughter novel is filled with heartbreak, but you won‘t want to stop reading. This engrossing read spans from the 1980s Philly streets to New Jersey, all the way to Bonaparte, Alabama. Ava grew up with her mother, Dutchess, in the South, and her mother is a true firecracker. However, their journey has been far from picture-perfect. The Unsettled is a spellbinding portrait of two fierce women reckoning with the steep cost of resistance: What legacy will we leave our children? Where can we be free?

Mother-daughter relationships include in-laws as well. An unlikely couple from two different backgrounds struggles to appease their parents, social circles, and themselves in this thoughtful novel, which is explored over two family vacations years apart. Keru is the daughter of Chinese immigrants who set high expectations for her that she feels she will never reach. Now, add that on to her mother-in-law, and Keru is slightly over it. As they all travel to two separate rental vacation destinations, the couple realizes their marriage also includes accepting each other’s families, no matter how difficult that may be.

With jazz as a background but important character, this novel follows a musician and womanizer named Circus Palmer and the consequences following his actions. In 2013, Circus was made aware that his drummer, Maggie, who was also his lover, was expecting their child. Instead of taking care of his obligations, Circus drops everything and skips town, which starts a domino effect impacting his now teenage daughter, Koko. Koko and Maggie have a complicated relationship because Koko admires her father and places him on a pedestal even when he doesn’t deserve it. As Koko comes into her womanhood, she navigates her mother’s mental health, her abandonment issues, and her sexuality.

This theatre-inspired novel sheds a fictitious light on thespians and the lives they lead behind the curtain. For Sadie, her career on stage is far more important than being just a mother to her daughter, Jude. But for Jude, she doesn’t see what the world sees: she doesn’t see a feminist, performance artist; she sees her as someone who abandoned her. But the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, because Jude gets the acting bug as well. Now she’s building buzz around her performance that centers maternal rage, which leads the public to ask questions neither one is ready to address yet.

Here’s a haunting novel that will have you rooting for the underdog. Ady is the daughter of Sanite, who is also enslaved on a plantation in New Orleans. Despite their plight, they remain close and spend as much time as they can together. Ady enjoys listening to her mother’s tales about their family and history, and when they are separated, Ady is distraught. With not many options for her, she stumbles into a quiet inn where she befriends a woman who introduces her to The Daughters. The Daughters is a secret society of spies that was created to undermine the Confederates.