I Am Not Your Baby Mother

Nov 1

I Am Not Your Baby Mother by @candicebrathwaite
Reviewed by Linda
📘📘📘📘📘

When I picked this up, I needed something that was pragmatic, candid, and powerful. Candice Brathwaite’s writing provides just the ticket. A part-memoir, expert guide, and manifesto, this fantastic and essential read is for everyone regardless of race, gender, creed, or colour. I can’t think of a better book to read now more than ever and I must stress that being a mother is not a prerequisite to reading.

Candice’s brutal honesty cuts straight through you and will leave you stunned with facts and figures that you probably weren’t aware of. The disparity in care between Black mothers compared with white mothers will shock you and you will ask yourself why and how, in 2020, can this be? But also the complete lack of representation of Black mothers compared with their white counterparts is startling. Candice is undeniably a trailblazer for what she does for Black women and those entering into motherhood.

Through her experiences, Candice shares her struggles and tragedies as well as celebrations and the joyful times, from her upbringing to her own journey into motherhood and the raising of her children and new family. As a South Londoner, I related to Candice’s description of the areas we grew up in and the gentrification that has spread like wildfire in the communities we know and love. With race relations fraught and more polarised than ever, her decision to leave London and raise her family in Milton Keynes played on my mind and made me look into the future somewhat.

I LOVED the way Candice wrote to me, her brutal honesty peppered with humour and her sharp wit made this a book I devoured in one sitting.

Lindafeminist non-fictionnon-fictiondebut authorsmemoirI am not your baby mothercandice brathwaitequercus booksmotherhoodparentingblack authorsblack womenwomen of colour

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

I Am Not Your Baby Mother

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