(illustration: mother-to-be Françoise and her wife Berith from my novel The House of Binding Thorns, art by Likhain)

So I thought I’d collate the result of this thread: I was writing an article and asked on twitter for recommendations of SFF written by people of colour which had mothers in them: specifically, the mothers had to be present, had to be fully realised characters in their own right (which meant lives of their own, not just mothers of their children), and had to survive (SO MANY DEAD MOMS, SO SO MANY). I haven’t seen a lot of those lists around so I thought it was worth preserving in an easier format than the very long twitter thread.

I got so many awesome looking suggestions that I thought I’d collate them here, to have a list that showcases the wide variety of diverse books/media that has mothers in them. If I don’t specify the format, it’s a book (because the overwhelming majority of suggestions are books). I haven’t done anything other than cursory checking on a lot of these (mostly my TBR list has grown by a ton, hahaha), so this is mostly a collation of works as presented on twitter. I also added a few works that weren’t genre because they seemed important to me and/or I enjoyed them a lot.

Octavia Butler, Xenogenesis, Parable of the Talents, Wild Seed

Zoraida Córdova, Labyrinth Lost and Bruja Born

Zen Cho, Sorcerer to the Crown

J Damask, Wolf at the Door

Somaya Daud, Mirage

Aliette de Bodard, In the Vanishers’ Palace, The House of Binding Thorns, Citadel of Weeping Pearls

Nicky Drayden, Temper

Tananarive Due, The Good House, The African Immortals series

Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Susan Ee, Penryn and the End of Days series

Zetta Elliott, A Wish after Midnight, The Door at the Crossroads

Eva L. Elasigue, Bones of Starlight: Fire Within and Bones of Starlight: Abyss Surrounding

Silvia Moreno Garcia, Signal to Noise

Hiromi Goto’s books

Andrea Hairston, Will Do Magic for Small Change

Heidi Heilig, For A Muse of Fire

Keri Hulme’s The Bone People (not genre)

Nalo Hopkinson, The Salt Roads, Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, New Moon’s Arms

Justina Ireland, Dread Nation

N.K. Jemisin, The Broken Earth trilogy, the Inheritance trilogy

Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male

Victor LaValle, The Changeling

Ken Liu, The Wall of Storms

Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda, Monstress (graphic novel)

Jeannie Lin, Gunpowder Alchemy

Dana Lone Hill, Pointing with Lips: Six Days in the Life of a Rez Chick (not genre but fabulous)

Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo

L.L. McKinney, A Blade so Black

Anna Meriano, Love Sugar Magic

Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo (movie)

Cerece Rennie Murphy’s books

Daniel José Older, Shadowshapers series

Malka Older, Centennal Cycle trilogy

Ellen Oh, Spirit Hunters series

Nnedi Okorafor, Binti trilogy, Akata Witch, Akata Warrior, Who Fears Death, Lagoon

Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl

Mark Oshiro, Anger is a Gift (not genre)

K Arsenault Rivera, The Tiger’s Daughter

Eden Robinson, Son of a Trickster and Trickster Drift

Nisi Shawl, Everfair

Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts (complex discussions of the mommy and mammy stereotypes)

Kong Sheng and Li Xue (dir.), Hai Yan (script, original book), Nirvana in Fire (TV series, not genre)

Tasha Suri, Empire of Sand

Na’amen Tilahun, The Wrath and Athenaeum series

K.S. Villoso, The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, Aina’s Breath

Gene Luen Yang & Sonny Liew, Shadow Hero (graphic novel)

JY Yang, The Red Threads of Fortune, The Black Tides of Heaven

My deepest thanks to everyone on twitter who contributed to this: Amal El-Mohtar, @cassanette, Mathieu Leocmach, Elle Gato, @quartzen, @robop_style, @mjfgates, Barb Chamberlain, Tim Pratt, Matt Weber, Alex P, Farah Mendlesohn, David Doherty-Jebb, @tamagoDono, @jacobkesinger, @gixininja, Larisa Breton, @wendleness, Jaymee Goh, Shenwei, Glen Mehn, Rachel Gutin, Tade Thompson, @krfabien, Jeannette Ng, Charlotte Honigman, @Llyfrgell_Babel, LA Knight, Daniel José Older, Jaz Twersky, Shweta Adhyam, Pat Thompson, @zrinkas, Cherie Priest, Astrid Bear, @wendylbolm, Alex Brown, Sarah Demp, @eaflu, T.S. Miller, Alix E Harrow, @puck1008, @3rdragon, @chaoticsequence, Amy Goldshlager, Laura Blackwell, Amanda Earlam, Laura Zats, @SKLiteratiPress, Luther M Siler, @nursing_z, Abbey Kirberger, @garik16, @Kvnrmrz, Kate Heartfield, Naleighna Kai, Brad M, @melissavandew, @peskierhouslion, Rachel Neumeier, Theresa Derwin, Alix Martin, Matt Young, Steve Roach, Mimi Mondal, Swordsmith, Kevin Sells, @popelizbet, Liz Argall, Orin Bellizio, Leigh Harlen, Evelyn Chirson, @queeriophile, Tonya Cannariato, @sarahtherebel, @ultragotha

2014 was a busy year, but mostly because I spent it taking care of the infant (and running after him in the last quarter of 2014)!

It’s very appropriate that out of all the stuff I published in 2014, my favourite is “The Breath of War”, my science fantasy story with spaceships, stone people and pregnancy. It was, hum, heavily inspired by September 2013 experiences, although of course I didn’t give birth in the middle of a space war :p
(if you read this blog, you’ll already know my position on the presence of women and positive depictions of pregnancies in fiction, so I won’t belabour it here–but it is part of why I’m putting this particular story forward).
It was on Tangent Online’s Recommended Reading List for 2014, and you can read it here at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, where it was first published; there are also ebook versions [EPUB|MOBI|PDF|RTF]. And an audio version read by Tina Connolly if audio’s more your thing!

And now onto other people’s fiction: I’ll direct you to my Book Smugglers Smugglivius post for the fiction I loved this year, but here are a few additional things I forgot.

Ahead of everything (which is a lot this year), I’ll just put in a strong recommendation for Xia Jia? She’s been publishing a lot of good fiction (an excellent novelette in Clarkesworld about the festivals of the future, and another one in Upgraded on old age and technology), and I think it’s a shame she’s not getting the recognition she deserves in the West. Here’s an interview with her done by Ken Liu, too.

Collection
From my Smugglivius post:
-Zen Cho, Spirits Abroad. A series of wonderfully light and funny stories, from the troubles of getting a boyfriend when you’re a pontianak (Malaysian vampire), to the changes wrought on a family by generations of immigration.

(plenty more behind the cut)
Continue reading →