Mother
Mom and me and mom by Maya Angelou: Selective Memoir that is too selective; fails to make a cohesive tale
This last book of Maya Angelou’s was my first book by her as a reader. Due to this somewhat unusual sequence, I thought the book was incomplete and rather too selective in terms of events that are described here. 
The book portrays Maya’ mother, Vivien Dexter as a mother who realized that she was not ready for small children, Maya, aged 3 and her brother Bailey, aged 5. So she sent them away to her mother-in-law, their grandmother. The children, though well loved by the grandmother, felt abandoned by the mother. It is not clear from the book if the mother called them back out of love or whether the grandmother’s fear of fifteen year old Bailey getting lynched for coming in the way of white people around. It is such lack of clarity that makes the book feel incomplete and the story disjointed.
The mom in this book is ‘lady’, who is full of life and love for her children. The daughter makes choices that might set her on a doomed path forever but her mother’s love teaches her to be strong and being proud of who she is. I read that Michele Obama, in her eulogy to Maya Angelou spoke of how Maya Angelou inspired and affirmed her as a black woman growing up in America. I could sense that inspiration from Maya Angelou’s life and it owed a lot to her mother, brother and grandmother’s love for her.
Love heals is the theme of the book and in the author’s life that saw her becoming a singer, stage artist, script writer, poet, writer and college professor as well as financially very successful. The author’s and her mother’s life have been interesting, full of hope and achievements but this book is rather selective in the narrative and does not leave one fully satisfied. The writing style is light and humorous and that makes it an easy book to read. As mentioned before, this is the last book by the author and may not be her best so I would like to recommend the author more than the book.
Please look after Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin
I have not read too many books from Korea – actually not a single book from Korea –so I was quite keen on reading this one. I am glad that I did. 
Korea, that too, rural Korea with its farming culture, hardworking people, living with basic necessities, and the mother, come alive in this book. I guess mothers all over the world are the same, they are devoted to their children and wish their children all the world while they themselves toil tirelessly each single day. The children, on their part, pursue their own dreams and move away, almost forgetting their mother’s sacrifices. The story in the book is of one such elderly mother, who gets separated and lost in the large city at the subway station.
It is so uncanny that most of us in the book club have experienced such incident in real life with someone close to us that it was almost frightening to discuss it! That also made the book’s appeal universal and very real for us.
The book is semi-autobiographical. I do not know if it is the translation or the original work that is written with ‘you’ instead of ’I’ or ‘she’, but this style of writing makes the reader take some time and effort to adjust and get into the flow of the narrative.
As the elder brother and writer sister begin and continue their search for their lost mother, the mother’s life in the small village in North Korea unfolds. There is an undercurrent of the siblings’ guilt of not caring enough for their mother. The grey area of exactly what happens to the mother pushes readers to map their own experiences and draw their own conclusions. This is a sensitively written story. The predominant emotion of remembering someone lost forever and wishing just one day with that person again is universal. I therefore am recommending this book to everyone for its touching story.
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