In her debut book of essays, Chantal Braganza considers the limits of understanding motherhood as identity or action alone, while reflecting on her upbringing as a daughter of Mexican and Indian immigrants and the first years of raising her two children. Inspired by the thinking of Dionne Brand, Maggie Nelson and Jacqueline Rose, she explores what shapes the things we reach for as we search for our family's place in the world.
Weaving 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 migration, identity, and speech. She engages with the physicality of motherhood and loss, nourishment and violence.
192 pages / Hardcover / 8" x 5.5"