Literary Fiction - The School for Good Mothers

Author: Jessamine Chan

Title: The School for Good Mothers 

Genre: Literary Fiction 

Publication Date: 2022

Number of Pages: 376

Geographical Setting: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

Time Period: Modern-day

Series (If Applicable): Not applicable 

Plot Summary:

Frida Liu has many identities; she is a second-generation Chinese American, a recent divorcee, and a working mom who is sleep-deprived and overwhelmed. She shares custody of her two-year-old daughter, Harriet, with her ex-husband Gust, and his girlfriend, Susanna, but this custody arrangement still does not quell her exhaustion. One morning, after another sleepless night consoling her sick daughter while simultaneously trying to finish a paper for her boss, Frida cannot find the documents necessary to complete this assignment. Thus, she decides to go into the office—alone—to pick them up; Frida leaves Harriet at home. Although Frida intends to go to the office and return to her daughter as soon as possible, she stays out of the house for two hours—until the police call her and ask her to come to the police station. Here, Frida gets questioned by the police, and a social worker, who determines it is in the best interest of everyone involved if Harriet stays with her father and only sees her mother through supervised visits set up by the social worker. After many failed visits with her daughter, Frida gets sentenced by a judge to a mandatory “rehabilitation program” (Chan, 2022, p. 78), where she and other moms who have also mistreated their children, in the eyes of the law, will learn how to properly care for the physical, mental, and social health of a stand-in child. If they pass the program, they may regain custody of their children. 

Subject Headings: 

• Chinese American Women
• Single Mothers
• Motherhood
• Dystopias (Chan, 2022, p. 375)

Appeals:

Characterization:

Wyatt and Saricks emphasize that characterization is important to the unfolding of the plot, particularly that which is deeply nuanced, stating that “[t]he philosophical questions central to these books are explored through character development” (Wyatt and Saricks, 2019, p. 74). The central conflict in The School for Good Mothers is the question of what it means to be a good mother and what kind of woman should be a mother. Frida’s decision to leave her young daughter unattended, alone at home, is the impetus for the ethical and legal questions about female autonomy and motherhood underlying the subsequent actions, decisions, and thought processes of Frida and the other mothers who are deemed unfit to care for their children. Despite the treatment of mothers as inferior by men and by other women, some of whom are mothers themselves, because of internalized misogyny, this negative characterization of women and mothers drives the novel’s plot. Of characters in literary fiction, Wyatt and Saricks explain that “[t]heir presence on the page is created through carefully crafted dialogue and strongly described behaviors, beliefs, actions, and reactions. These characters have rich interior worlds that readers are invited to enter and explore” (Wyatt and Saricks, 2019, p. 76). In The School for Good Mothers, the reader receives information about the internal workings of Frida and how she perceives the world around her, exclusively through a third-person limited point of view.

Story Line: 

An element of the story line in literary fiction is that it “operates in the realm of ideas as well as practicalities, and these novels often consider universal dilemmas” (Wyatt and Saricks, 2019, p. 74). The socially constructed issues surrounding motherhood and misogyny are “universal dilemmas” (Wyatt and Saricks, 2019, p. 74) because individuals will always experience gender-related prejudice and discrimination, despite increased awareness and efforts to counteract this intolerance and judgment. Although The School for Good Mothers is not a science fiction novel, it does contain dystopian elements, and a feature of literary fiction that crosses into the science fiction genre is that readers appreciate “when their favorite literary authors speculate on what is to come and use those future settings to mine themes of gender, social change, politics, ethics, and human nature . . .” (Wyatt and Saricks, 2019, p. 83). Despite not being a science fiction novel, the dystopian elements in The School for Good Mothers act similarly to the type of literary fiction/science fiction crossover Wyatt and Saricks describe with its in-depth exploration of “gender, social change, politics, ethics, and human nature . . .” (Wyatt and Saricks, 2019, p. 83).

Pacing:  

Wyatt and Saricks state that “[l]iterary Fiction is almost never fast-paced. Authors pride themselves on the layers of meaning in their works, which take time to discover and savor” (Wyatt and Saricks, 2019, p. 77). Their consensus matches the pacing of The School for Good Mothers. As the novel focuses on Frida’s internal anguish over a little more than a year, the pacing is idle and seems to slow down even more once Frida arrives at the “rehabilitation program” (Wyatt and Saricks, 2019, p. 92). The program is physically and emotionally taxing on the women, Frida included, and the slower pacing serves as a vehicle to communicate this turmoil to the fullest extent. 

3 Terms that Best Describe This Book:

1) Thought-provoking

2) Suspension of disbelief

3) Unethical practices 

3 Relevant Non-Fiction Works and Authors:

1) China's Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-child Policy by Kay Ann Johnson

Frida, the protagonist in The School for Good Mothers, is a second-generation Chinese immigrant. Although her heritage is not the central theme, it is important to the conversation about motherhood as it relates to mothers who belong to minority groups. Furthermore, although Chan sets the novel in the United States, the outcomes for families living under the One Child Policy in China are similar to those endured by Frida and her fellow mothers who had their children forcibly removed from their care and who were mandated to undergo training under a “rehabilitation program” (Chan, 2022, p. 92) far from home before the courts would consider reuniting them with their children. 

2) Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society by Judy Christie

This nonfiction book documents the unethical 'business practices’ of a woman named Georgia Tann at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, who, between the 1920s and 1950s, “ran a black-market baby business” (Cover copy-b) in which she “offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents—hiding the fact that many weren’t orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died” (Cover copy-b). Additionally, Christie’s work examines how these children, orphaned at the institution decades, nearly centuries before, learned they were part of Tann’s practice and reunited with their families as adults (Cover copy-b).

3) Bad Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America by Molly Ladd-Taylor

In The School for Good Mothers, the constant refrain that the educators at the school where Frida and the other moms get confined under the threat that if they leave, they will lose the chance of reuniting with their child or children make the women repeat is: “I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good” (Chan, 2022, p. 86). While some of the women committed legitimate acts of neglect and abuse, the actions of others, while ethically ambiguous, did not necessarily constitute abuse or neglect in the eyes of their peers but did under the government’s classification system. Bad Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America examines “such diverse topics as the mother-blaming theories of psychological and medical "experts," bad mothers in the popular media, the scapegoating of mothers in politics, and the punitive approach to "bad" mothers by social service and legal authorities” (Cover copy-a). This idea of the “punitive approach ( . . . ) by social service and legal authorities” (Cover copy-a) serves as the basis for the plot in The School for Good Mothers and, like its fictional counterpart, which discusses issues of race and ethnicity as they relate to motherhood, Bad Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America analyzes the concept of motherhood and all its complexities from a sociological perspective.

3 Relevant Fiction Works and Authors:

1) The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman

Although the plot of this book is more historical, I chose it as a read-alike because, like The School for Good Mothers, this novel focuses on a mother and daughter separated by legal forces, the accompanying heartache, how they cope with this trauma, and the desire for a reunion. Furthermore, as the nonfiction books I chose already revealed, institutions such as orphanages or maternity homes and the poor treatment of those employed there share similarities with how Frida and the other mothers in the program in The School for Good Mothers are treated by the staff there, with only a possibility, not a promise, of reunification with their children.

2) Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh

This science fiction novel invokes the idea of a setting where the government has control over women’s reproductive rights, taking away their bodily autonomy by choosing for them whether they receive a “white ticket” (Cover copy-c), which is symbolic of “marriage and children” (Cover copy-c), or a “blue ticket” (Cover copy-c), which is symbolic of “a career and freedom” (Cover copy-c). Underlying the decision of which colored ticket a woman gets is the concept of what kind of woman is deemed fit for motherhood. This question about womanhood and motherhood is continuously referred to, implicitly and explicitly, by the characters in The School for Good Mothers. Additionally, this book is a science fiction novel, which relates to The School for Good Mothers, which, although a work of literary fiction, incorporates some dystopian elements into the plot. 

3) Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen

The final sentence summarizing the plot of Dark Lullaby, “At first everything goes well but then the small mistakes, ISPs (Insufficient Standard of Parenting), build up and suddenly Kit is face to face with the idea of losing Mimi, and she is forced to ask herself how far she will go to keep her family together” (Cover copy-d), could function simultaneously as a brief synopsis for The School for Good Mothers. Both authors set their books in nearly dystopian environments where motherhood—both who is worthy and the proper parenting techniques—is not only constantly scrutinized but also controlled by those in power.

 

References:

Chan, J. (2022). The school for good mothers. Simon & Schuster.

 

Christie, J. (2019). Before and after: The incredible real-life stories of orphans who survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Ballantine Books. 

 

Cover copy-a. Bad mothers: The politics of blame in twentieth-century America, by Molly Ladd-Taylor, New York University Press, 1998.

 

Cover copy-b. Before and after: The incredible real-life stories of orphans who survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society, by Judy Christie, Ballantine Books, 2019.

 

Cover copy-c. Blue ticket, by Sophie Mackintosh, Knopf Doubleday, 2020.

Cover copy-d. Dark lullaby, by Polly Ho-Yen, Titan Books Ltd, 2021.

Goodman, J. (2018). The Home for Unwanted Girls. HarperCollins.

 

Ho-Yen, P. (2021). Dark Lullaby. Titan Books Ltd.

 

Johnson, K.A. (2016). China's hidden children: Abandonment, adoption, and the human costs of the one-child policy. The University of Chicago Press.

 

Ladd-Taylor, M. (1998). Bad Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America. New York University Press. 

 

Mackintosh, S. (2020). Blue Ticket. Knopf Doubleday.

 

Wyatt, N. & Saricks, J.G. (2019). The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Genre Nonfiction. (3rd ed.). ALA Editions.