Mama
A Queer Black Woman's Story of a Family Lost and Found
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography • Winner of the 2025 Memoir Magazine Prize in the LGBTQ+, Family, Resilience Category
In this searing and uplifting memoir, a young Black queer woman fresh out of college adopts her baby brother after their incarcerated mother dies, determined to create the kind of family she never had.
Nikkya Hargrove spent a good portion of her childhood in prison visiting rooms. When her mother—addicted to cocaine and just out of prison—had a son and then died only a few months later, Nikkya was faced with an impossible choice. Although she had just graduated from college, she decided to fight for custody of her half brother, Jonathan. And fight she did.
Nikkya vividly recounts how she is subjected to preconceived notions that she, a Black queer young woman, cannot be given such responsibility. Her honest portrayal of the shame she feels accepting food stamps, her family’s reaction to her coming out, and the joy she experiences when she meets the woman who will become her wife reveal her sheer determination. And whether she’s clashing with Jonathan’s biological father or battling for Jonathan’s education rights after he’s diagnosed with ADHD and autism, this is a woman who won’t give up.
Nikkya’s moving story picks up where Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy left off, exploring generational trauma and pulling back the curtain on family court and poverty in America. Mama is an ode to motherhood and identity, and to finding strength in family and community, for readers of memoirs by Ashley C. Ford, Natasha Tretheway, and Dawn Turner.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hargrove (Good Mom on Paper) recounts adopting her younger brother after her mother's death in this moving memoir. Hargrove's mother, Lisa, who was addicted to cocaine and shuffled in and out of prison, placed the author in the care of her maternal grandparents. When Hargrove was 24, shortly after she graduated from Bard College, Lisa got pregnant, and Hargrove decided to become the legal guardian of her infant brother, Jonathan, to keep him out of the foster care system. The weight of that decision increased when Lisa died less than a year later, and Hargrove had to raise Jonathan alone, without help from the boy's erratic father. After meeting and falling for a Sri Lankan woman named Dinushka, Hargrove adopted Jonathan and moved to suburban Connecticut. There, she and Dinushka weathered homophobia from Dinushka's parents, bullying from their conservative neighbors, and behavioral issues that Jonathan developed after he entered school. Hargrove never loses sight of the difficulty of her situation, or the mistakes she's made in handling it, and she forcefully illustrates the power of forging new connections to overcome childhood wounds. Readers will be inspired.
