Becoming Ammi

From the award-winning author of Another Appalachia, an intimate portrait of queer motherhood and mother-loss—with meditations on grief, familial legacies, and selfhood

In  Becoming Ammi, author and educator Neema Avashia reflects on a new stage of her life:  becoming a parent.

Through short reflective chapters, Avashia weaves together stories of early motherhood as a Desi, queer, Appalachian, and non-gestational parent (a parent who did not physically carry or give birth to the child). 

Becoming Ammi is shaped by Avashia's real-time reflections written like diary entries—some fully formed, written during the quiet of 3 a.m. feedings, while others are fragmented, scribbled down in the small moments she could carve out each day. Together, the essays culminate into a deeply personal meditation on her transforming sense of self.

Written in three parts, the book explores Neema’s relationship with her daughter, questions of integrating her old life into her new one, and becoming a mother while losing her own.

Intimate and candid, Avashia's story will speak to anyone who does not feel like they fit into the traditional framework of “parent.”