9 Books Featuring Fascinating Mother-Daughter Relationships

Was there ever a more extraordinary and complex relationship than that between mothers and daughters? Arriving just in time for Mother’s Day, a new book explores that unique bond, which can be beautiful, toxic and everything in between: The Book of Mothers: How Literature Can Help Us Reinvent Modern Motherhood by Carrie Mullins (May 7). Mullins, a journalist and parent of two young sons, looks at mothers in classic novels, including Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, Beloved and Heartburn, and how readers’ understanding of these women has been shaped by our evolving culture. Take Marmee from Little Women. Viewed as “sweet, sexless, pious and adept with a needle and thread,” Mullins writes, yet also — people forget — mad as hell. “I am angry nearly every day of my life,” Mrs. March says to daughter Jo.

It’s complicated, being a mom (or a daughter!).

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Below we offer eight more books featuring fascinating mothers and their children. The descriptions below include Mullins’ take on how motherhood is portrayed in The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan and L.M. Montgomery’s classic, Anne of Green Gables.

AARP (Source: Penguin Random House (2), W.W. Norton & Company, Simon & Schuster, Getty Images (4))

Joan is Okay by Weike Wang (2022)  

​Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, NPR and many others, Joan is Okay features the indelible Chinese American heroine Joan, 30-ish and contentedly working in a frenetic New York City hospital. When her dad dies in China, her mother returns to America. Unable to speak much English, she’s totally dependent on Joan and her brother Fang. Then the pandemic hits, making it impossible for Joan’s mom to leave. Can this very different mother and her difficult daughter find peace? Part of the pleasure in reading this novel is finding out. 

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson (2022)

This absorbing, best-selling novel (turned into a Hulu limited series last year) is about a mother’s complicated history, which her children discover after her death. The Caribbean-born matriarch, Eleanor Bennett, has a son, Byron, and estranged daughter, Benny, who are given an audio recording she left for them. They listen as she spins a remarkable story about a young swimmer named Covey and a tragic incident that changed the course of her life and the lives of others. She also tells her children that she has baked a traditional Caribbean black cake and left it for them in her freezer, adding, “I want you to sit down together and share the cake when the time is right. You’ll know when.” Eventually, after receiving the shock of their lives about their mother, they do.