Here are 76 books that The Other Mother fans have personally recommended if you like
The Other Mother.
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I was adopted as a baby, so I have first-hand experience of the emotions and challenges this presents. I am passionate about shining light on this often misunderstood and complex family trauma through my writing. My memoir Blood and Blood, an emotive exploration of the search for my birth relatives, was shortlisted for the Mslexia Prize. My research extends to fiction and non-fiction, where the psychological effects of adoption are referenced or highlighted. I am always keen to chat with fellow care-experienced people. I hope you find the books on this list helpful.
One thing about being adopted is you have an in-built radar to seek out others who are too. I read Jeanette Winterson’s first novel, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit when I was a teenager, and since then, I have been in awe of her as a writer and her ability to eloquently describe her personal experience as an adoptee.
This book is her autobiography, and there were occasions while reading it that I had to stop and cry. Finally, someone else had written about what I had kept holed up inside me. Her final chapter, "The Wound," speaks so profoundly to me as an adopted adult. It is honest, sharp, and fierce.
The shocking, heart-breaking - and often very funny - true story behind Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
In 1985 Jeanette Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published. It was Jeanette's version of the story of a terraced house in Accrington, an adopted child, and the thwarted giantess Mrs Winterson. It was a cover story, a painful past written over and repainted. It was a story of survival.
This book is that story's the silent twin. It is full of hurt and humour and a fierce love of life. It is about the pursuit of happiness,…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
When I was going through the process of adopting my second child, after having my first by a more conventional route, I looked for diverse representations of mothering to help me make sense of my journey. These recommended books helped me to understand the lived experience from all sides of the adoption triangle: adoptee, birth mother, and adopter. I was curious about the experience of other mothers whose children have an additional mother and found a lack of life writing on surrogacy and egg donation. As a published novelist and poet, I decided to move into experimental life writing and undertook a PhD in Creative Writing to discover and write their stories.
Sally Donovan’s book is a memoir by an adoptive mother of two children who were removed from their birth family due to abuse and neglect. It’s an eye-opening, and at times eye-watering, read, educating the reader about the complexities of mothering children who have experienced trauma. It is also a deeply moving book about ‘hope, love and healing.’
Anyone considering adopting would benefit from reading this book.
An uplifting true story of an ordinary couple who build an extraordinary family, No Matter What describes how Sally and Rob Donovan embark upon a journey to adopt following a diagnosis of infertility.
Sally Donovan brings to life with characteristic wit and honesty the difficulties of living with infertility, their decision to adopt and the bewildering process involved. Finally matched with young siblings Jaymey and Harlee, Sally and Rob's joy turns to shock as they discover disturbing details of their children's past and realise that they must do everything it takes to heal their…
When I was going through the process of adopting my second child, after having my first by a more conventional route, I looked for diverse representations of mothering to help me make sense of my journey. These recommended books helped me to understand the lived experience from all sides of the adoption triangle: adoptee, birth mother, and adopter. I was curious about the experience of other mothers whose children have an additional mother and found a lack of life writing on surrogacy and egg donation. As a published novelist and poet, I decided to move into experimental life writing and undertook a PhD in Creative Writing to discover and write their stories.
Carrie Etter’s haunting poetry collection presents the imaginings of a birth mother who gave up her child for adoption when she was seventeen, exploring the many diverse visions she has of her son as an adult. The poet sees her son everywhere: in the supermarket, on the train, in the park.
This is a profoundly affecting collection that I could not put down.
"In Imagined Sons Carrie Etter reflects on the experience of a birthmother who gave up her son when she was seventeen. In a series of haunting, psalm-like prose poems of enormous courage and insight, she describes possible encounters with this son now in his late teens, expressing how 'sometimes the melancholy arrives before the remembering'. The series of 'Birthmother's Confessions' return to repeated, harrowing questions that yield different answers at different moments. This quite extraordinary book by a writer of great imagistic power and skill ('hair the dark red of a nectarine pit') leaves a mark on the reader which…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
When I was going through the process of adopting my second child, after having my first by a more conventional route, I looked for diverse representations of mothering to help me make sense of my journey. These recommended books helped me to understand the lived experience from all sides of the adoption triangle: adoptee, birth mother, and adopter. I was curious about the experience of other mothers whose children have an additional mother and found a lack of life writing on surrogacy and egg donation. As a published novelist and poet, I decided to move into experimental life writing and undertook a PhD in Creative Writing to discover and write their stories.
Adoptee Jackie Kay’s poetry collection presents the voices of three speakers who are distinguished typographically: the daughter, the adoptive mother, and the birth mother.
Read in conjunction with Kay’s memoir on adoption, Read Dust Road, this poetry collection offers a fascinating insight into the adoption triangle through multiple versions of the same events.
Jackie Kay tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple, from three different viewpoints: the mother, the birth mother, and the daughter. The Adoption Papers won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In 2022 The Adoption Papers was selected as one of ten books representing the 1990s in The Big Jubilee Read, a celebration of great books from across the Commonwealth to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, one of only three poetry collections out of 70 books on the list.
I had an early experience with a past life regression. Over the years, my curiosity resulted in a search to find answers about this experience. So, I have read and studied extensively about the topic and the issue. For me, the culminating experience was the seminar with Dr. Brian Weiss at the Omni Center. The program was designed for therapists and highlighted techniques in past life regression, specifically for healing purposes. My time with Dr. Weiss convinced me that this is a very critical topic that most people are not only curious about but actively searching for answers.
This book provides a relationship example of two individuals who find each other in this life, given a history of past lives. It highlights the real possibility of finding someone with whom you have been connected in a past life and the cues and clues that can be used to signal such an intimate connection.
Reading this book will assist the reader in understanding those cues and clues to recognize the past-life connections that all of us have in this lifetime.
A "beautiful and sensitive" tale of true love that transcends time, from the multi-million bestselling author of Many Lives, Many Masters (Gary Zukav, author of Seat of the Soul). Recommended by Kendall Jenner.
In Many Lives, Many Masters, a skeptical Dr. Brian Weiss found his life changed profoundly after curing a patient using past-life therapy. Now he takes his research into transcendental messages one breathtaking step further.
He portrays two strangers, Elizabeth and Pedro, who are unaware that they have been lovers throughout the long centuries -- until fate brings them together again. He shows how each and every one…
I’m fascinated by angry, feral, primal women. In my book, ten stories feature these women, the ones doing the things we’re not supposed to do, thinking and feeling and saying the things we’re not supposed to. I think we’re beyond powerful when we embrace our anger, nourish and cultivate it, channel it. So I write about these women in the hopes that I’ll get a bit of their strength. The books in this list have inspired me as a writer and thrilled me as a reader.
This story collection grabbed me right away from the title and stole my heart with some of the most exciting and visceral characters that I’ve read. In “West of the Known,” my favorite story, a young girl escapes violence to become an outlaw; in “The Diplomat’s Daughter,” a woman renames and reworks herself into a feared force of nature. I’ll be honest that reading this book inspired me and scared me; I wanted to write as powerfully and truthfully about anger and violence in women as Chanelle did. So when I asked her to read an early copy of my book, and she came back with lovely praise, I just about lost my mind.
*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2018 PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE FOR DEBUT FICTION*
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 WILLIAM SAROYAN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR WRITING*
Named a Best Book of 2017 by The San Francisco Chronicle
Named one of Electric Literature’s 15 Best Short Story Collections of 2017
A stunningly original debut collection about lives across history marked by violence and longing.
A brother and sister turn outlaw in a wild and brutal landscape. The daughter of a diplomat disappears and resurfaces across the world as a deadly woman of many names. A young Philadelphia boy struggles with the contradictions of privilege, violence, and…
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers. Among them are four Indiana soldiers…
I've always been fascinated by what makes life tick. I was a gifted child, not my own label, but I had all of the special classes. It took me years to get over the notion that I was supposed to have all the answers, and when I did, I found myself searching for all the answers I was supposed to have had. I went headlong into current events and psychology, again wanting to know how the world ticked. And I'm qualified to give you my list insofar as you are qualified to go look these titles up. I share the most profound repositories of knowledge with you.
I always worry about being homeless. If you’re fifty percent of this country, you probably should worry a little bit because it wouldn’t take much. Teresa Gowan lived with the homeless population of San Francisco the way she might a tribe in Amazon.
This is one that didn’t so much blow my mind as it did humanize a group of people that sit on the margins. Gowan did a great job.
Winner of the 2011 Robert Park Award for the Best Book in Community and Urban Sociology, American Sociological Association, 2011
Co-winner of the 2011 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the Sociology of Culture, American Sociological Association, 2011
When homelessness reemerged in American cities during the 1980s at levels not seen since the Great Depression, it initially provoked shock and outrage. Within a few years, however, what had been perceived as a national crisis came to be seen as a nuisance, with early sympathies for the plight of the homeless giving way to compassion fatigue and then condemnation. Debates…
A good puzzle will draw me in every time, and I’ve always loved mysteries. When I was a kid, Trixie Belden was my favorite sleuth. In junior high, I tried my hand at writing a few mystery stories. I also discovered logic puzzles about this time. In a mystery, you have to locate the clues and put them together in a logical manner to solve the riddle. Now I’m the author of 100 published books. Many of them are mysteries, and most of the ones that aren’t have elements of mystery within the story.
I love historical mysteries, and this series set in nineteenth-century San Francisco delivers the goods. I really like the main character, Annie Fuller. She’s been left on her own, and she excels at her ventures as a boardinghouse owner and a financial advisor. When she learns she has sleuthing talents as well, there’s no stopping her. In this book, she goes undercover as a housemaid to solve a mystery.
It's the summer of 1879, and Annie Fuller, a young San Francisco widow, is in trouble. Annie's husband squandered her fortune before committing suicide five years earlier, and one of his creditors is now threatening to take the boardinghouse she owns to pay off a debt. Annie Fuller also has a secret. She supplements her income by giving domestic and business advice as Madam Sibyl, one of San Francisco's most exclusive clairvoyants, and one of Madam Sibyl's clients, Matthew Voss, has died. The police believe his death was suicide brought upon by bankruptcy, but Annie believes Voss has been murdered…
I used to write a food blog because I love stories about food, be they fiction or non-fiction. Food has the power to bring joy, healing, love, anger, sadness, etc.—you name the emotion and food can evoke it or remedy it. I’ve suffered from depression most of my life and the kitchen makes me feel better. Hearing that my chocolate cookies are amazing heals my heart a little at a time. Food and emotion go together like peanut butter and jelly, and I’m the first to pick up a book that skillfully employs both.
For years, I couldn’t get yeast to cooperate. I just wasn’t patient enough and it was too darn temperamental. One day, the yeast worked. I made a lovely brioche dough and turned that into the stickiest, sweetest, yummiest cinnamon rolls known to man.
I might not have stuck with my fussy yeast if it were of the variety in Sourdough. The starter that’s given to the main character sings, hums, and sometimes glows. It’s alive. I know that all yeast is alive, but this yeast is sentient.
All that being said, the thing I love most about the book is that it is weird. I love weird people and things. I love weird books. What I don’t love about a lot of weird books is that they aren’t as immensely readable as Sourdough. Especially the ones that dance through genres as vastly different as science fiction and romance. But…
From Robin Sloan, the New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, comes Sourdough, "a perfect parable for our times" (San Francisco Magazine): a delicious and funny novel about an overworked and under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker.
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living
Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the…
Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration
by
Mark Doherty,
I have woven numerous delightful and descriptive true life stories, many from my adventures as an outdoorsman and singer songwriter, into my life as a high school English teacher. I think you'll find this work both entertaining as well as informative, and I hope you enjoy the often lighthearted repartee…
I’ve had a passion for weirdness in mundane settings since my childhood days watchingThe Addams Family in a boring suburb. I grew up with the Apollo program, but as I realized I’d never be an astronaut, I increasingly turned to writing science fiction and fantasy set on Earth. I discovered role-playing games shortly after D&D came out, but when I became bored with characters who were only after money and mayhem, I found other RPGs and began writing for them. FGU’s Bushidointroduced me to Japanese mythology, which inspired my first urban fantasy novel, The Art of Arrow Cutting, which led me to being invited to write Shadowrunnovels.
The difference between urban fantasy and horror is that in urban fantasy, the supernatural elements may be benign, not scary. In Tea With the Black Dragon, the fantasy element is Mayland Long, a black dragon converted to Buddhism and transformed into human form to search for a Zen master. In San Francisco, he meets middle-aged Martha Macnamara, violinist and zazen practitioner, and assists her in looking for her daughter. Amateur detectives (one of them a dragon) vs. computer criminals; there’s no magic and not much violence.
In this "astonishing fantasy debut," a mother and a mysterious Chinese man-who is more than he appears-search for her missing daughter in San Francisco (Locus).
Offering "a deft blend of the oldest of magicks in a dragon, and the newest of sorceries in computers" (Anne McCaffrey), this is the incomparable novel that garnered Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and Philip K. Dick Award nominations, and earned its author the John W. Campbell Best New Writer award.
Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter, Elizabeth, is in trouble-she just doesn't know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours…
