Famous authors who help carry the mother’s voice
Long before this site, these writers heard her and set her voice down on the page. Read them. She is in every one.
Sojourner Truth
Speech at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio1851
She stood up as a woman who had labored and been denied, and would not be silenced. Read the original transcript by Marius Robinson.
Harriet Jacobs
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl1861
A mother who hid for seven years to stay near her children, in her own words.
Frances E.W. Harper
Sketches of Southern Life1872
Her Aunt Chloe poems speak as a mother whose sons were sold away, and who lived to find them again.
Georgia Douglas Johnson
Poems in The Crisis1916 to 1924
Poems written as a mother to her child, in the years of the Harlem Renaissance.
Langston Hughes
Mother to Son1922
A mother tells her son the truth about the climb, and tells him to keep climbing. A man writing fully in her voice.
Jamaica Kincaid
Girl1978
A mother's instructions to her daughter, hard medicine and love in one breath.
Marian Wright Edelman
The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours1992
A mother's lessons for a life of service, written to her sons and to every child.
Maya Angelou
Letter to My Daughter2008
She gave birth to a son and wrote this to the thousands of daughters she claimed as her own.
Imani Perry
Breathe: A Letter to My Sons2019
A mother asks her sons to hold the history without being held down by it.
Jasmine L. Holmes
Mother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope2020
Letters to her young son about who he is and whose he is.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead
Letters to My Black Sons
Letters, poems, and notes written to her two boys over fourteen years.