10 Queer Books For People With Mommy Issues

In literature, as in real life, complicated mothers and our relationships with them affect us whether they’re in the room or on the page with us or not. I’m interested in books where mothers are not necessarily central characters—some are dead when the story begins, for example—but whose impacts (or absence) are far-reaching. The sort of mothers who give their children mommy (or, for a certain brand of queer person, mommi ) issues. In my own novel, A Good Happy Girl , Helen is the remaining child of incarcerated addicts who might love her but definitely love each other. Listless, aimless, and sipping cough syrup, Helen dates a married lesbian couple who prods into her past just as her father calls with an already ignored request; will Helen help him get parole? Helen’s mother calls her too, offering her only silence on a monitored line. While editing the novel with my agent, I gave my protagonist what I considered a gift: closure with her mother in an on the page reunion. In edits with my editor, the entire chapter was cut. The book is more honest for it. These ten queer books, I think, encapsulate the weird and sometimes wonderful ways our relationships with our mother figures shape us and the nurturing we seek. * The Price of Salt The Price of Salt (Carol) by Patricia Highsmith Therese, orphaned and sent to live with nuns at a young age, is a curious but timid shopgirl working at a department store and trying to get into theater set design. Carol, an unhappy divorcee, burns Therese’s bedtime milk, writes a check for her professional dues, and charms her into a cross country road trip with the classic high femme bullying approach. The pair cross paths while Therese is working at a department store (generally believed to be inspired by Highsmith’s winter working at Bloomingdale’s) and Carol buys a present for her daughter, whom she is on the brink of losing custody for because even her husband can’t deny she’s gay. It’s tragic! It’s funny! It’s perfect pulp. Melissa Broder, Milk Fed; […]

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