Mamas
About This Book
Can a white mother and a Black mother become true friends, the kind who are close beyond sharing a parenting group? Helena Andrews-Dyer asks that question and wonders whether the answer even matters. She lives in a sought-after Washington, D.C. neighborhood, where handsome rowhouses stand alongside the changes that come with gentrification. Soon after her first child was born, she joined a local parenting circle known as the Mamas, where she was one of the few Black mothers. Differences in race, background, and income were obvious from the start, yet the group also gave her a cheerful refuge, a small bubble where race seemed not to matter.
Then George Floyd was killed, and the image of a man calling out for his mama changed how the group felt to her. Andrews-Dyer found that she and the other mothers shared plenty: fear for their children's safety, frustration with husbands they considered idle, and the familiar strain of working too much while feeling guilty about it. Still, she faced pressures her neighbors could not fully grasp. She examines the particular challenges of a group where systemic racism is discussed as if an Excel spreadsheet could solve it, and where she, a Black professional with an Ivy League education, keeps overcompensating. Her private worries surface in questions such as why she always makes sure to wear her wedding ring when out with the baby, and why every name considered for their children had to sound good on a job application.
A global pandemic and a nationwide push for social justice add to the strain, and the book follows her search for an answer to whether mothers from different backgrounds can truly understand one another. Written in a witty, candid voice, the memoir explores the contradictions and camaraderie of motherhood across racial lines, set against a rapidly changing world.
ISBN: 9780593240311
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