All posts filed under: Columns

Dani McClain | Mama’s Writing

By Sherisa de Groot

Mama’s Writing is Raising Mothers’ monthly interview series, created by Deesha Philyaw. How has the experience of raising children shaped your own personal growth as a writer and as an individual? Being pregnant and having a very young child motivated me. I worked on a piece about the Black maternal health crisis while in my third trimester, and it was published in The Nation when my daughter was about six months old. That article became the basis of the first chapter of my book WE LIVE FOR THE WE, which was published in 2019 when she was nearly 3. It’s a book about parenting and it’s a memoir, so everything I was experiencing in my daughter’s early months and years felt like potential material for the book.  As she has gotten older, I’ve taken on additional caregiving responsibilities in my family. I’ve also moved more behind the scenes in publishing. I worked as a ghostwriter on a memoir. I’ve served as a developmental editor on some fantastic nonfiction projects, supporting authors who are writing on topics …

Shop Talk with Lucy Yu of Yu & Me Books

By Dara Mathis

Lucy Yu is the founder and owner of Yu & Me Books, a “bookstore / café / bar” that focuses on the stories of immigrants and people of color. Yu & Me, which is based in Chinatown, Manhattan, NY, originally opened its doors in December 2021, and reopened in January 2024 after a fire. You can follow the bookstore on Instagram. Tell me what led you to become a bookseller. I believe books are the gateway to understanding experiences deeper outside of our own and they lead to true human connection. I’ve always gravitated towards literature because I’ve always been curious about people. During the pandemic, I feel that we all were restrained to just glimpses of connection which were  fabricated by technology but left us aching for the real thing. I was hoping I wasn’t the only one that desired that, so I started to build out Yu & Me Books to create a community bookstore home to encompass all these intersectional ideals I wanted. It turns out I wasn’t the only one and …

Ten Questions for Chin-Sun Lee

By Sherisa de Groot

What inspired you to tell this story? About eight years ago, I spent two consecutive summers in a hamlet in the Catskills, where I was able to observe small town life. As someone who’d lived mostly in large urban cities, I found the ecosystem of a rural community pretty fascinating. On one hand, it was predominantly white, so it was a new experience for me to feel how I stood out. On the other hand, I was surprised by how tolerant most people were toward each other, despite varying backgrounds of class, race, occupation, and sexual orientation. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that within a small confine, you had to accommodate, or the society around you would become dysfunctional. This was also just before the Trump era, and the divisiveness it ushered in, so I’m not sure if that tolerance remained or changed in that community since. In any case, I’ve always had a sociological bent, so this dynamic of compression was intriguing to me, and in my novel, …

Buying Time

By Kristen Gentry

This is Unfolding Inheritance, a column by Kristen Gentry exploring mother-daughter relationships, the impact of parental addiction, and the journey of finding and loving yourself through it all. * I love to shop. I get it from my mama. So much of my childhood was me and Mama at the mall, wrapped in the warm, chocolate chip smell of Great American Cookies and the chemical clean of the fountain’s chlorine. With the citrus froth of Orange Julius on my tongue, I watched the endless bubble of stumpy white geysers and gathered calm in the sound of the water’s gentle slap as it returned to the clear, shallow pool. I asked Mama for coins so I could throw them into the water to join other nickels, dimes, and pennies, shimmering on the fountain’s turquoise-painted bottom like fish scales. I wanted to make a wish.  I was always making wishes, but as an adult, I can’t imagine what I would have wished for then. I was already with my favorite person doing what we loved to do. …

Dr. Donja Thomas | Mama’s Writing

By Starr Davis

Mama’s Writing is Raising Mothers’ monthly interview series, curated by Starr Davis. What recent writing accomplishment(s) are you most proud of? Was this accomplishment shared and supported by your children? The most recent writing accomplishment I am most proud of right now is a piece I wrote that represents my unique voice and style as an afro-futurist author. It is an encouraging story of hope, love and purpose meant to inspire and engage human spiritual memory. I definitely had my children and young generations in mind as I created it. I personally believe that every soul has a vital role to play in helping all of us ascend higher as a collective society and each generation must be affirmed in knowing the power and purpose they possess in order to bring about better tomorrows. This story seeks to serve as a manifesto of prophecy and strength for those who read it. It also is the chrysalis behind my emerging writings that are currently in the making.  Tell about a time mom-guilt emerged (or emerges) in the …