Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found

Hargrove (Good Mom on Paper) recounts adopting her younger brother after her mother’s death in this moving memoir. Hargrove’s mother, Lisa, who was addicted to cocaine and shuffled in and out of prison, placed the author in the care of her maternal grandparents. When Hargrove was 24, shortly after she graduated from Bard College, Lisa got pregnant, and Hargrove decided to become the legal guardian of her infant brother, Jonathan, to keep him out of the foster care system. The weight of that decision increased when Lisa died less than a year later, and Hargrove had to raise Jonathan alone, without help from the boy’s erratic father. After meeting and falling for a Sri Lankan woman named Dinushka, Hargrove adopted Jonathan and moved to suburban Connecticut. There, she and Dinushka weathered homophobia from Dinushka’s parents, bullying from their conservative neighbors, and behavioral issues that Jonathan developed after he entered school. Hargrove never loses sight of the difficulty of her situation, or the mistakes she’s made in handling it, and she forcefully illustrates the power of forging new connections to overcome childhood wounds. Readers will be inspired. Agent: Stacey Glick, Dystel, Goderich, and Bourret. (Oct.)