Customer Reviews

Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering

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The contributors to this lovely and almost lyrical anthology of mothering far from home, face all the regular roadblocks of raising healthy and happy children and then some. This collection will resonate with so many expatriate families or those who have chosen to live abroad. More importantly, buried in the narratives are many true gems of wisdom of cross-cultural mothering.

To all multi-cultural mamas, dads, children, expats, TCKs, etc -

I've had a hard time finding reading material (specifically personal stories) related to the area of raising children overseas/multiculturally. "Call Me Okaasan" not only fills a niche, but very entertainingly and movingly so.

Thank you Suzanne for putting this together and giving us all a little perspective. I've already given it as a present and probably will again.

Arigato!

I am not a mother, but through my sister I do have a close relationship with a bi-cultural child, and I found the stories in this book very moving. One story by Leza Lowitz was so moving and affecting that I was stopped stark in my tracks imagining all the ways that cultural ideas and norms smack hard into emotions and real-world decisions as this woman, a powerful writer, grapples with one of the largest decisions of her life. One scene, such a well drawn, quiet scene with a little boy walking up to an injured cat in a huge city, and stopping to comfort the cat moved me very deeply. The writing in this story glowed. Another piece I really responded to and remembered (it's been more than 6 months since I read this book and I still remember this story) was an essay by a woman who is partially of Indian descent with a partly African-American partner has two children, and how one of them is born with white skin, and another, full sisters, is born with brown skin, and how this wise mother grapples with both her own feelings as a person of color in the US, and her predictions and emotions about how these two sisters will grow up. The work of the editor here, in choosing what stories and essays are important for us to read, is evident throughout. Her ability to spot, and highlight, those with real punch make the collection itself much more than your standard thematic hodgepodge of loosely related pieces of writing. If you care about children who are ripped between two cultures, and what they go through, definitely pick up this book.