Fri, Feb 10
|All She Wrote Books
POSTPONED: Class is In Session: A Conversation With Jessamine Chan and Michelle Min Sterling
In-person event celebrating the paperback release of The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan!
Time & Location
Feb 10, 2023, 7:30 PM
All She Wrote Books, 451 Artisan Way, Somerville, MA 02145, USA
About the Event
***Hey, friends. We're sad to share that some unforeseen challenges have come up and we must cancel Friday's event (2/10). We'll be in touch with the folks who registered with a ticket shortly, and we'll provide a rescheduled date when possible.
Thanks for your understanding, and many thanks to Jessamine Chan's and Michelle Min Sterling teams for their partnership!***
Join All She Wrote Books for an in-person event celebrating the paperback release of The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. For this event, Jessamine will be joined by debut author Michelle Min Sterling!
This event will be hosted in-person at All She Wrote Books on Friday, February 10th at 7:30pm. If you need additional access for this event, email us at info@allshewrotebooks.com.
About the Book
Longlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction 2022 First Novel Prize
Selected as One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2022!
In this New York Times bestseller and Today show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance, in this “surreal” (People), “remarkable” (Vogue), and “infuriatingly timely” (The New York Times Book Review) debut novel.
Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.
Until Frida has a very bad day.
The state has its eye on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgement, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.
Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.
An “intense” (Oprah Daily), “captivating” (Today) page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages. Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.
Jessamine Chan’s stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University. She lives in Chicago with her family. The School for Good Mothers is her first novel.
Michelle Min Sterling teaches literature and writing at Berklee College of Music, and has been published in Joyland and The Baffler. Her debut novel, Camp Zero, is forthcoming in April 2023.
Image Description: Class is postponed. Gradient pink arches with text inside that reads: Some unforeseen challenges have come up and we must cancel Friday's event.