Rumaan Alam, "That Kind of Mother"

Rumaan Alam, "That Kind of Mother" at Politics and Prose at the Wharf on 5/13/18.

Alam’s accomplished fiction debut, Rich and Pretty, was remarkable for its insightful portrayal of strong women characters and its trenchant observations of class and gender. His second novel builds on these strengths with the story of a first-time mother who feels overwhelmed by her new responsibilities. Rebecca, an affluent white woman, hires Priscilla, a black woman on the hospital staff, to be a nanny to her son. While Priscilla reassures Rebecca and teaches her about motherhood, she also shakes her out of some of her complacent assumptions about race and privilege. Then Priscilla dies in childbirth, Rebecca adopts her son, and, as the white mother of a black boy, learns deeper and harder lessons about race, inequality, and expectations. Alam is in conversation with Melissa Scholes Young, author of Flood.

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Produced by Tom Warren