The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters

The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and DaughtersA powerful new voice, telling the American story through three generations of Black mothers. "The Waterbearers is one of the most beautiful and truthful books I've ever read." Imani Perry, National Book Award winning author of South to America "An epic love song and remarkable ballad of generations." Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams Sasha Bont grew up in 1990s Houston, worlds removed from the Louisiana cotton plantation that raised her

A powerful new voice, telling the American story through three generations of Black mothers.

"The Waterbearers is one of the most beautiful and truthful books I've ever read." --Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America

"An epic love song and remarkable ballad of generations." --Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams

Sasha Bonét grew up in 1990s Houston, worlds removed from the Louisiana cotton plantation that raised her grandmother, Betty Jean, and the Texas bayous that shaped Sasha's mother, Connie. And though each generation did better, materially, than the last, all of them carried the complex legacy of Black American motherhood with its origins in slavery. All of them knew that the hands used to comb and braid hair, shell pecans, and massage weary muscles were the very hands used to whip children into submission.

When she had her own daughter, Sofia, Bonét was determined to interrupt this tradition. She brought Sofia to New York and set off on a journey--not only up and down the tributaries of her bloodline but also into the lives of Black women in history and literature--Betty Davis, Recy Taylor, and Iberia Hampton among them--to understand both the love and pain they passed on to their children and to create a way of mothering that honors the legacy but abandons the violence that shaped it.

The Waterbearers is a dazzling and transformative work of American storytelling that reimagines not just how we think of Black women, but how we think of ourselves--as individuals, parents, communities, and a country.

Author: Sasha Bonét
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 09/16/2025
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.27lbs
Size: 9.42h x 6.51w x 1.25d
ISBN: 9780593536087


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2025
Publishers Weekly 07/28/2025
Booklist 08/01/2025

About the Author
SASHA BONÉT is a writer and cultural critic based in New York City. Her criticism and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Aperture, New York Magazine, Vogue, and BOMB, among other publications. Bonét is a professor of creative writing for Columbia University and Barnard College.