What if we consider motherhood an organizing principle instead of a genre or subject? In her debut book of essays, Chantal Braganza explores the space where identity and motherhood meet. For fans of Dionne Brand, Maggie Nelson, Leslie Jamison, Jacqueline Rose, and Sloane Crosley.

How do we tell our children who they are when we're still struggling to find that language to describe ourselves? Journalist Chantal Braganza, who once thought of herself as "an assemblage of parts," reflects on her upbringing as a daughter of Mexican and Indian immigrants while raising her own multiracial sons. She explores what shapes identity, and the things we reach for as we search for our family's place in the world.
Engaging with a unique structural style, Braganza weaves dreamlike memoir sections of her childhood-some memories, some myths passed down from her family in Vallarta, Mombasa, London, and Toronto-with urgent essays about identity. She wrangles with the limits of language-finding that even fluency doesn't guarantee the ability to translate something for your children.
The questions that emerge are: Can we believe the people who have given us the story of who we are? And how do we, responsibly, craft that story for our own children?