| Summary: |
"A woman searches for connection with her ailing mother while grappling with a long-held family secret in this heartrending memoir on love, life, and plants. In the last year of her father's life, Kyo Maclear set out to write an 'operating manual' of sorts, on love, for her youngest son. She was interested in exploring how very specific territories of love--romantic, nuclear family--have tended to be over-accentuated in the western world, leaving whole other areas of relationship, like elder-care and love of the natural world, under-emphasized. The 'operating manual' was geared toward the making of new narrative maps, alternative ways of imagining one's lives and loves. This work was interrupted by a period of grief when Kyo's father died in December 2018. Three months later, she received the results of a genetic test that revealed something unexpected: a family secret. The father who had raised her was not biologically hers. On paper this story is a search to discover the truth of Kyo's conception and the identity of her birth father. But underlying that drama is the more significant question: what is kinship? What are its contours? At the heart of the book is Kyo's shatteringly complex relationship with her mother and the power dynamics of race and gender conformity, how the shifting responsibilities of generational care and dependence manifest within it. Ma is a propulsive personal narrative of family secrets and betrayals; some answers are discovered, others left in the shadows of missed opportunities and failing memories. Kyo's desire to connect with her mother through soil, through the humbling act of gardening leads to profound insights about nature, and how our relationship to it reflects histories of exploitation and conquest. There are probing questions about storytelling, its possibilities as well as its limitations in revealing some of our deepest human connections. Ultimately, Ma is a love story to Kyo's utterly unique family, and a generous offering to the world."-- |
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