The Waterbearers has been described as an intergenerational memoir.
Sasha Bonét explores the complexities of the legacies of Black motherhood in America and weaves her family’s personal history with the broader cultural narratives of Black women.
This is not a simple story. At a certain point—even in childhood—we learn quickly that the lives of our mothers and grandmothers were anything but simple. In her own experience, Bonét traces the story of her grandmother Betty Jean on a Louisiana plantation, and on to her own mother, Connie, in 1990s Houston, and then finally to herself raising her own daughter.
Bonét examines and offers a compelling argument for how each generation adapted and strived for more in this world—while also shouldering the weight of historical trauma rooted in slavery.
The author also explores the complexities of our familial relationships. Love coexists with pain and strife. In Bonét’s own case, for her mother and grandmother, love was a paradox accompanied by painful lessons.
And what of the title and the imagery and of waterbearers? Bonét uses this compelling and apt metaphor of a river and its tributaries to map out the story of her family and also of the many other Black women she feels are waterbearers for new generations.
Through her book, Bonét herself in her own role as mother— but also as scholar and author— seeks to disrupt the cycle of trauma and offers this memoir as an act of confronting pain and seeking healing.
Guest: Sasha Bonét is a writer, cultural critic, and professor of creative writing at Columbia University and Barnard College.
Waterbearers is published by Alfred A. Knopf.
