The Mother as Antihero

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Sasha Bonét’s matrilineal memoir, “ The Waterbearers ,” traces the lives of her mother and grandmother: powerful, complicated women whose personalities have been shaped by the rough edges of American society. Mothers, she suggests, can pass on both grace and grief. The flow of the bayous of Houston, where she grew up, remind her of “the way my mother and grandmother pour into me, and I into my daughter; the valuable and the harmful, the minerals and the mud.” Not long ago, she joined us to discuss four other books that examine complex mothers. Her remarks have been edited