My mom gets every saying wrong. Not occasionally. Consistently, creatively, and with complete confidence. “Don’t be a stick in a butt! It’ll be fun!” Some of my most joyful memories are sitting around the kitchen table with my sisters and cousins, laughing until we cried at whatever she’d mangled that day. “Pickers can’t be choosers, Mayito!” That is exactly what they are, Ma.
She also taught me to dance salsa so I could impress my abuela and my tías. She was my champion when a guidance counselor denied me entrance to accelerated classes I had qualified for simply because I was bilingual. She accepted everything about me without question. Her response to me coming out was simply “Don’t you think I know that already?” as she steered the car around a corner, ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast playing in the background.
My mother wasn’t always laughing, and I often felt it was my responsibility as a kid to pick her up when she was down. I was there cheering when she decided to make changes for herself. I was there when she walked across a stage to receive her first college degree while raising three kids. And my grandparents, who had been through more than I understood at the time, beamed like it was the best day of their lives. It probably was. Most kids don’t get to witness their parents achieve milestones like that, but I did. I feel lucky to have been celebrated by my mother and also get to celebrate her successes as well. To lift her up when she’s down and to lift her even higher when she is up.
I say all this because the ten books I compiled for this list are, at their core, about that specific current of love that runs between mothers and sons: complicated, sometimes devastating, and when you’re lucky, mutual in ways that surprise and eventually define you.
For Queer sons and their mothers, that current carries extra voltage. There’s more to navigate, more that can go unsaid, more that has to be invented from scratch because there’s no existing script to follow. These ten stories are heartbreaking yet hopeful, often strange and surreal, but they all capture a different facet of the unique bond between mothers and their Queer sons.
Continue reading “Ten Books About Mothers and Their Queer Sons, Recommended by Mario Elías”
