The Waterbearers - by Sasha Bonét (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A sharp, tender, sweeping history of three single Black mothers-the author's grandmother, mother, and the author herself-interwoven with the stories of the Black women they saw on the screen and heard on the radio every day. Here is a masterpiece of life writing by a thrilling new voice, a writer who will remake how we think of generations. We begin in a house along a bayou in Texas, a home bought and paid for-and run-by the author's grandmother. Betty Jean spent twenty summers in the swamplands of Louisiana as a cotton tenant farmer before going north to Texas in the Great Migration. It was there that she would raise her eleven children, most by different fathers whom she rarely kept around. "If she tended the land and the laundry," Bonâet writes, "what were the uses of a man?" Mama Connie, one of those eleven, grew up under her mother's controlling hand and struggled to forgive, vowing that her life would be different. But when it came to having children of her own, she was more like Betty Jean than she cared to admit. She made her home just a few blocks away, and received the same nickname as her mother, the "Black Widow." And, like her mother before her, Connie's sweat was the founding salt of her own universe. Today, Sasha Bonâet, like each woman before her, wrangles with the pull of her mother's orbit, the austerity and love from which it came. She is the first in her family to look to the past in order to radically reimagine her future, and the future of her daughter. In fostering a community of motherhood, Bonâet interrogates all aspects of being a mother-escape and promise, burden, assent, and rebellion-not just for those who came before her, but for those Black women with whom society is acquainted, too: Nina Simone; Oprah Winfrey; Audre Lorde, and Darnella Fraiser, who filmed the murder of George Floyd and mobilized the world"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

"An epic love song and remarkable ballad of generations." --Leslie Jamison

"I couldn't write about Black motherhood without writing about America." --Sasha Bonet

Sasha Bonét grew up in 1990s Houston, worlds removed from the Louisiana cotton plantation that raised her grandmother, Betty Jean, and the Texas bayous that shaped Sasha's mother, Connie. And though each generation did better, materially, than the last, all of them carried the complex legacy of Black American motherhood with its origins in slavery. All of them knew that the hands used to comb and braid hair, shell pecans, and massage weary muscles were the very hands used to whip children into submission.

When she had her own daughter, Sofia, Bonét was determined to interrupt this tradition. She brought Sofia to New York and set off on a journey--not only up and down the tributaries of her bloodline but also into the lives of Black women in history and literature--Betty Davis, Recy Taylor, and Iberia Hampton among them--to understand both the love and pain they passed on to their children and to create a way of mothering that honors the legacy but abandons the violence that shaped it.

The Waterbearers is a dazzling and transformative work of American storytelling that reimagines not just how we think of Black women, but how we think of ourselves--as individuals, parents, communities, and a country.

Review Quotes

"The Waterbearers is one of the most beautiful and truthful books I've ever read. Bonét tells the whole history of this country through the relationships of and between Black mothers and daughters. It is as intimate and tender as it is vast and stormy. Unforgettable." --Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America

"Sasha Bonét's The Waterbearers is a bold new entry in the canon of literature about Black motherhood. With great intention and beauty, Bonét explores what it means to care for others and for oneself in the matrix of race, class and gender that powers American culture. A beautiful counternarrative to the ways motherhood--and Black motherhood specifically--are usually imagined in American literature, this is an intricately constructed sonnet on the inherent contradictions in mothering another person." --Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of Libertie

"Sasha Bonét's tale is a tale of evolution and hope--a moving forward while looking back at generations of women who have sought something better for themselves, their families, and, ultimately, the worlds that sought to define them. I have been waiting to read this story for a very long time." --Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of White Girls

"At once propulsive and tender, Sasha Bonét's The Waterbearers is an epic love song and a remarkable ballad of generations. By the end of this book, I knew I held in my hands a new American classic, and that I would never forget this family, whose story is the story of America, and that the women in these pages had forever deepened my understanding of motherhood, history, homecoming, and the revolutionary potential of love." --Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams

"The Waterbearers is magnificent in its nimble agility. People are elevated to wonders, if that is still possible, and Sasha Bonét dances on our hearts in this classic creation of will and wit. Electrifying. Wow." --Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir

"In this piercing and poetic debut memoir, cultural critic Bonét traces three generations of Black women in her family. ... Clear-eyed but never cynical, Bonét approaches these cycles of difficulty and disappointment with curiosity, crafting ... a beautiful testament to generational resilience and a forceful reckoning with the legacy of American racism." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Cultural critic Bonét makes her book debut with a fervent homage to Black women--grandmothers, mothers, sisters, and cousins--who have instilled an indelible life force in their families. ... At times tender, furious, selfish, and sacrificial, these were 'complicated women, ' whom Bonét portrays with compassion. A fresh contribution to Black history, rooted in the author's past." --Kirkus

"A stunning memoir of Black American matriarchy that brings together the author's research, experiences, and diamond-sharp prose. ... Bonét tells the stories of her ancestors, herself, and Black women in U.S. history ... [and] unfurls the beauty of these women alongside their pain and tethers each word to an immediately felt recognition of the sum total that made her the artist she is. Fathoms deep and deeply spellbinding." --Booklist (starred review)

About the Author

SASHA BONÉT is a writer and cultural critic based in New York City. Her criticism and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Aperture, New York Magazine, Vogue, and BOMB, among other publications. Bonét is a professor of creative writing for Columbia University and Barnard College.