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That Kind of Mother: A Novel Audiobook
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NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2018 BY Buzzfeed • The Boston Globe • The Millions • InStyle • Southern Living
“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 celebrated author of Rich and Pretty, 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 in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help—Priscilla Johnson—and begs her to come home with them as her son’s nanny.
Priscilla’s presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca’s perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently.
Written with the warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us.
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“Alam’s deeply sensitive and provocative second novel authentically touches on themes front and center in today’s discourse—white privilege, the rocky path of good intentions, racial divides, and the profoundly intimate details of motherhood and of accomplished women finding their way in a man’s world.”
— Library Journal
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“Dives deep into big questions about parenthood, adoption, and race…Both heartfelt and thought-provoking.”
— Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author -
“From [a] heartbreaking premise, Alam plumbs still more heartbreaking questions about the power and limitations of maternal love, and the implacable persistence of racial divides.”
— Huffington Post -
“Brilliant…Quite possibly the best peek at motherhood and its disorienting seesaw effects on a middle-class suburban woman that we have seen in a long while…A stunning accomplishment.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“Alam cements his status as that kind of writer: insightful, intrepid, and truly impressive.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“Offers a memorable depiction of a mother’s journey as her children grow and her marriage collapses.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“This gorgeous book calls into question all our assumptions…Brave, sharp, and empathetic…Motherhood as I’ve never seen it.”
— Danzy Senna, author of New People
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About Rumaan Alam
Rumaan Alam’s writing has been published in New York Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, the Rumpus, Washington Square Review, Gettysburg Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. He started his career in fashion publishing at Lucky magazine, has written extensively on interior design for Domino, Lonny, Elle Decor, ArchitecturalDigest.com, and elsewhere. He has worked in advertising as a copywriter and creative director. He studied at Oberlin College and lives in Brooklyn.
About Vanessa Johansson
Vanessa Johansson, Earphones Award-winning narrator, is a film and theater actress and voice-over artist who graduated from Carnegie Mellon University and later trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.