You may be a grown up woman–single, married, satisfied with who you are or still in search of yourself–but you are still your mother’s daughter. Deny it. You can try. Defy it. You can try that too. At some point, though, you will acknowledge that Mom has had, and still has, a big influence on you.
Maybe it was the advice your mother gave, or didn’t give. Maybe it was the hugs she lavished on you, or the ones she withheld but you so desperately craved. Or maybe it was the sacrifices she made on your behalf. Or the way she seemed to care more for your siblings than she did for you.
Whatever your relationship with your mother, it’s unlikely you can say she had nothing to do with your becoming who you are.
You are–aren’t you?–your mother’s daughter.
Nelvia Brady believes so.
To explore the idea of what it means to be your mother’s daughter, she spent countless hours talking to women about their relationships with their mothers. Some women told her about loving relationships, so dear and deep as to bring you to tears. Other women told stories so bruising and painful that their tales would make you cry too.
That wasn’t Brady’s intent when she started. What she wanted to do was bring together the simple wisdom that mothers share with their daughters and collect it all in a lovely, little book of quotes. Send it off to the publisher. Have it distributed. Collect some royalties. The end.
Instead, it was only the beginning of a year-long odyssey of sending out e-mail queries, handing out postcards and talking to more women than she ever dreamed she would.
Seated at her dining room table on a recent Saturday afternoon, Brady, who holds a PhD in education, talked about that odyssey and how it eventually became the book, “This Mother’s Daughter.”
“I wanted to write a book that would codify the simple wisdom that African-American mothers share with their daughters,” she said. “The things we’ve all heard: `Come into this world alone, you’re going to leave this world alone.’ `A hard head makes a soft behind.’
“I was just intrigued by the fact that there was all this stuff out there and it wasn’t coming together anywhere. I was afraid we’re losing it, with the young mothers and the way our society is so mobile that you’re not around grandma like you used to be.”
So last year, around February, Brady says, something started gnawing at her to move ahead with her idea.
“I was going to do this little book of quotes, so I got on the Net and I sent a call out, saying `Please send me information about those pearls of wisdom that your mother shared with you.’ “
By the time the responses started rolling in, Brady knew a book of quotes would not do justice to what women were telling her.
“The e-mails (replies) were long and involved and not what I expected at all: `My mother didn’t pass me any wisdom,’ for example, or `I don’t just want to tell you what my mother said, I want to tell you what she did.’ “
“I had to tell a bigger story,” Brady concluded.
Now she has.
“This Mother’s Daughter” (Nelvia M. Brady; 800-626-4330; $24.99) is no book of quotes. What it turned out to be is a collection of 20 real-life stories that examine the complexity of African-American mother-daughter relationships.
Brady, a former chancellor for The City Colleges of Chicago, calls the book her “miracle child.” As is any good mother, she is devoted to seeing that it goes out into the world with all the support and nurturing she can provide. Three months ago she resigned her job as a vice president with an executive recruiting firm to promote the book full time and give it a big push before Mother’s Day.
She chose to publish the book herself and is promoting it without the public relations muscle of a big publishing house. Along with traditional bookstore signings, Brady has been holding discussions about the book and its subject in churches, in private homes, on college campuses. In some cases, she has held Tupperware-style house parties where women reveal, recall, bemoan and celebrate their own stories about maternal bonds.
Sometimes, women want more than one copy. That’s what happened at the home of Chicagoan Janis Marley, a librarian at Truman College, who hosted a book party for Brady recently. The 18 women who attended bought 40 books.
“Even people who could not come wanted to purchase books,” Marley said.
Emma Rodgers, co-owner of Black Images Book Bazaar in Dallas, also has seen the book’s effect on women. As someone who has been in the book-selling business for 23 years, even she was impressed with Brady’s in-store presentation.
“She ranks among the top,” Rodgers said. “Not many self-published authors know that you need to put forth the kind of effort she has.”
The standing-room-only crowd at Rodger’s store gobbled up 30 copies, which is “good for a non-fiction book with not a lot of PR,” Rodgers said.
Brady’s tenacious efforts also caught the notice of Publisher’s Weekly book-selling editor Kevin Howell, who put one of the magazine’s writers on the story. “The subject matter and her personality are two of the strongest selling points of the book,” he said.
Since the Publisher’s Weekly story ran two weeks ago, Howell said he has heard that a couple of major publishers are interested in talking with Brady about picking up the book.
Brady confirmed that, yes, three major publishers–Simon & Schuster, Penguin Putnam and St. Martin’s Press–have contacted her, and her agent is in discussion with them.
“It will take a load off of me (financially),” she said during a quick phone call before she left for New York for more promotional appearances.
While the book could ultimately make Brady famous, one irony is that she went to great lengths to protect the privacy of the women she interviewed. Because so much was revealed–details about money, friendship, personal hygiene, dating and beauty–many women did not want to bring harsh attention to themselves.
For that reason, Brady insisted the mother-daughter pairs use pseudonyms.
“I felt I had to protect them even if they didn’t think they needed to be protected,” she said.
One of the women, who is referred to as Rachel in the book, said in a phone interview she did not mind sharing her story “on a personal level, to the extent that it’s going to be useful to other women.” But as a lawyer working in a large organization, she wanted her real name kept private because she did not want to be “bombarded by total strangers.”
Rachel, who knew of Brady’s original idea to share with a wider audience the sayings that African-American mothers hand down to their daughters, recalled a book signing she attended earlier in New York with the author.
“Nelvia would say to the audience, `I’m going to start this saying, you finish it.’ A few white women and men in attendance couldn’t complete the sentence. They had no idea what the context was.
“She (Brady) calls them `momilies’–mothers’ sayings unique to the culture of African-American women,” Rachel said of phrases like “Let every pot sit on its own bottom” or “Life will offer you either lessons or blessings,” which are quoted by daughters throughout the book.
One daughter who knows a lot about the big advice that comes wrapped in little sayings is Brady. While the book does not include her story as a daughter, it does include her mother’s.
Hanging on the wall in Brady’s dining room is a framed series of photographs of her mother, Jessie Moore, “in all her different stages of life,” Brady said affectionately. “She’s an incredible, incredible woman.”
“This Mother’s Daughter” is dedicated to Moore.
“I thought that I was going to get all stories like mine” for the book, Brady said.
Surely her mother must have told her, “Sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong.”
WORDS AND ACTIONS TO LIVE BY
What Nelvia Brady hoped to do when she conceived “This Mother’s Daughter” was allow women to talk about their mothers and share the wisdom and advice passed on to them by their mothers. Here are some selections from the section titled “Daughters Share Mothers’ Wisdom”:
Brenda
“We knew she had a boyfriend and he was real good to us and good for her. There were three young girls still at home at the time. It could be pouring, storming, raining, a blizzard, or whatever, and she would never let him spend the night. He had to get out of that house. We would even say, `Well Momma, it’s too bad out there, don’t let him go out like that.’ She’d never let a man stay there with her and her girls overnight. We knew her boyfriend very well, but never once did she let him spend a night. My mother never let it happen. If I were a single mother, I could never let a man spend the night.”
Judy
“When I asked her how she handles life’s ups and downs so smoothly, she responded, `You must learn not to become upset or distressed by things that are beyond your control.’ She also sets an example by her own loving ways. She always has time to listen or to do, is eternally patient, and gives unconditional love, always.”
Lena
“Never leave your house a mess. You never know how you may have to come back. You may get sick while out and someone may have to bring you home. Then they will see how you live. Even if you aren’t a dirty person, if your house is a mess that one time, that’s what they will think about.”
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Brady will sign copies and talk about “This Mother’s Daughter” from noon to 2 p.m. Thursday at Afrocentric Bookstore, 333 S. State St.
