-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
by Nicole Nelson
In this striking debut, an ambitious academic faces new and unwanted choices when she is confronted with overnight motherhood...
Dr. Mona Melamed is a happily married, purposefully childfree linguist at a top Southern California university. Her days are spent researching and stressing about finally, finally securing tenure. That is, until her brother-in-law and his wife die, leaving their six-year-old son orphaned.
Everyone in Mona's orbit expects her to take the lead in caring for the child, including—to some extent—Mona herself. Motherhood is not something she wanted–it is still not something she wants. And yet, she finds herself negotiating a temporary leave to start looking after the boy. Along the way, as the gender expectations thrust upon Mona intensify, her tenure becomes threatened.
Family Language confronts that age old question–Can women really have it all?--and uncovers the misogyny behind it. As Mona tries to balance her new responsibilities as a mother, she has to ask herself how hard is she willing to fight for the career she's earned, and is it fair that she even has to?
Media reviews not yet available.
This information about Family Language was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nicole Nelson earned her MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars. Her work has appeared in The Masters Review Blog, Literary Mama, Fiction Writers Review, and elsewhere. For several years, she was a co-host of the podcast "Writers on Writing." She also holds a PhD in linguistics from Rutgers.
If you liked Family Language, try these:
A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas--a place ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
