Mothers

VOLUME SYNOPSIS

by Umi Kusahara. Published by Glacier Bay Books, August 2023. 264 pages. (ISBN 978-1-953629-24-1) EXCERPTS ARE POSTED BELOW Mothers is Kusahara Umi's debut English title, collecting and translating 15 years worth of self-published short stories developed on themes of love, family, and loss. Mothers contains 12 short stories that encapsulate different facets of the human experience. A man grapples with his complicated relationship with his mother, who he abandoned after leaving home for college, and whose heart (and body) were too big for the world to be kind to; a young girl finds a small bird, and after nursing it back to health the bird continues to grow alongside the girl, accompanying her through each stage of life in a kaleidoscopic waltz until it carries her "home" for one last journey; the familiar "Red Riding Hood" context is juxtaposed with a young woman who comes into the woods to visit her "wolf" grandmother, the literal fantasy-tinged presentation dissolving into the subtle issue of independence and the difficulty of caring for those in need; a young mother visits her new husband's estranged-and-now-comatose son at the hospital, looking for answers after he and his girlfriend are recovered from a car crash; these and many other works which Kusahara Umi has carefully crafted over the years will be available in English for the very first time.…