Minelle Mahtani

A searing, intimate and blisteringly honest memoir about mothers and daughters, grief and healing, and finding your voice.

Minelle Mahtani had taken a leap of faith. A new mother in a new life, she’d moved across the country for love, and soon found herself facing the exciting and terrifying prospect of hosting her own radio show. But as she began to find her place in the majority white newsroom, she was handed devastating news: her Iranian mother had been diagnosed with tongue cancer.

Just as Minelle was finding her voice, her mother was losing hers.

What does it mean to amplify the voices of others while the stories of your ancestors are being buried in your mother’s mouth? Why do we cling to superstition and luck when we’ve lost all faith in healing those we love? And how do we juggle bearing the burden of looking after an ill parent when we are trying to parent our own children?

In exquisitely lyrical and inventive prose, Mahtani recounts the experience so many of us recognize: a life calibrated through calculating when to speak and when to be silent in a world that feels like it forces us to be broken.