Thank you to NetGalley for the audio ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

When I read the description of this memoir, I failed to note the timeline. I was a bit surprised to hear a teen’s story being read by an adult, in an adult voice. Then I wondered whether it was narrated by the author—no the book is narrated by the supremely talented JD Jackson, whose work I shall definitely be looking out for in the future. And as Manny got older, he seemed to grow into Jackson’s voice.

This memoir definitely has all the feels. The main focus of the storyline is, of course, the mother who is not available, mentally, emotionally, and often physically. At a relatively young age, the author, Manny develops a sense of responsibility for both his mother and his younger siblings, often putting far more effort into their care and well-being than his own. This is encouraged by both the mother, Selita, and grandmother, known as Mama Dear. Manny’s father is not a significant part of the story, though his stepfather, father of the younger children, is present.

In addition to the challenge of his mother’s mental illness, Manny lives with physical disfigurement, the result of a fire when he was a baby—I kept waiting for this to be explained in more detail than it was. This does not affect his interest in girls, but does have an impact on the results of said interest. However, the driving force behind most of his actions continues to be the needs of his family. They live in extreme poverty, but Manny somehow manages to keep them afloat.

The format of the memoir is interesting, told through letters from Manny to his mother over a 20 year period. The dates are given, and events that are significant to Manny are included. He is a fan of a variety of music and artists, and this is incorporated as well. I would not have assumed letters would lend themselves so well to an audiobook, but JD Jackson’s narration adds another layer to Williams’ written word.

This book is listed as YA, but I think it would be of interest to anyone who has ever struggled setting boundaries with a family member, particularly one with mental health or addiction issues. I highly recommend the audiobook.

Thank you Net Galley for an ARC of Listen MaMa by M.S.P. Williams. Wow, such a good memoir. It was very relatable, I highly recommend this memoir. If you have not been in poverty as I was not, it gave me a look at what it would be like and that is going to stay with me.

Listen Mama is heartbreaking and a wonderfully sad memoir that will make you cry, smile with sadness, and even make you remember your own story (if it is similar).

We meet Manny in the early 90s when he begins his journey through the turbulent waters of his existence as a teenager and we are witnesses to his ordeals and tribulations until the bittersweet but satisfying conclusion of his story, in the late 2000s. This is a good recollection of someone who endured a lot. It hit home for me.

I do recommend being cautious when diving into this story

Some TW's that I saw:
Anxiety, Bipolar, bullying, depression, overall mental illness, death, Domestic abuse, and sexual assault, drugs, trauma, food insecurity, and weight issues.

There are more but these are the ones I remember the most.

I am glad that I was given the opportunity to finally cry during a story that hit close to home for me

Thank you, NetGalley

#ListenMama #Netgalley

a beautiful coming-of-age memoir, M.S.P. Williams [Manny] writes a moving narrative of his life, focusing specifically on his relationship with his mother who struggles with mental illness, through letters to her. it’s deeply honest, at times heartbreaking, and incredibly frustrating. the reader will come to love and root for Manny while he struggles to move forward in life bearing the weight of helping to raise his younger siblings, supporting his mother, experiencing bullying and self-consciousness, and trying to understand love.

this memoir is also filled with a number of pop cultural references

listened on audio 🎧 thank you so much to @netgalley for the review copy!

Listen mama is a very moving audiobook, with an awesome narrator and JD Jackson. Manny while struggling with insecurities in a deformity of his own rights his mother letters of the happenings in the home. They are mostly written while she is in one of her crazy states and most seen positive. Although he does talk of being bullied at school and her going from normal to not so normal. This book will make you cry and you may need Kleenex and with the narrator being so superb at what he does you definitely feel emotions you weren’t expecting to. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves A book about the making of a hero, because Manny is exactly that. Although the ending is bittersweet it is so worth reading I love the book!!! I was given this book by Nick Galli and I’m leaving this review voluntarily. Please forgive any grammatical a punctuation errors as I am blind and dictate most of my review. All opinions are my own.

This book was not my cup of tea but I do have several students in mind that I think this would resonate with. You really get a deep appreciation of what many of our kids are living through and the heartache they carry with them. I had a hard time with the language of the letters in the beginning. It was hard to believe that they were being written by a middle school age student with the large vocabulary and deep soul searching thoughts. I would have preferred to see those things develop as the character aged.

The narrator does a great job of being in character. His tone and accent really help to give a good mental picture of the character. My only complaint was that it was read at such a slow cadence that it was maddening. I had to increase my playback speed.

This book is so powerful. The format of letter writing in books always hits me hard, and this only solidified that for me.

The book feels like growing up right beside Williams. The bipolar from his mother, the typical teenage issues, the struggle of going out on his own while being responsible for so many people, and ending up somewhere he never envisioned himself being across the span of the book is so incredibly written and paced. The dates on the entries really serves a reminder that this story unfolded over a lifetime and is as real as it gets.

At times it does get uncomfortably personal, but that is the sweet spot for memoirs in my opinion. There is nothing better in this kind of book than feeling as if you stepped into your new friend's house when their parents were arguing and just had to paint on a smile and pretend like it was all good. All of the people are presented as real humans, flaws absolutely included but not highlighted. The overarching narration screamed to me that everyone is just human and doing what they can in any given moment and sometimes that's all we can ask of them.

The audiobook narration adds another layer to this. It is much more difficult to think of these things when we are hearing them aloud, and Jackson does it such justice. I would absolutely recommend listening to the audiobook, it did take me a couple days just because of the intense subject matter but I think that just shows how impactful this book is.

This book was both heartfelt and heartwrenching. The author writes this book in letter form to his mama. He writes about her bipolar disorder, commitment, and paranoid episodes in vivid detail. Williams also discusses the multiple reconstructive surgeries that he had as a child after being badly burned, and how others opened up to him with their own trauma growing up. The descriptions of the progression of his mother’s bipolar disorder are heartbreaking, and likely familiar to those who have watched someone they love go through it. He graduated from college around the same time I graduated from high school, so his discussion of growing up in the 90s was also something I connected with. I empathized with his frustration and exhaustion at always having to be the adult and provide for and raise his siblings because his mother was unwell or unable to. I found some parts hard to follow because he discusses so many different family members in each section. I also found the dated entries a little disrupting to the flow of the story at times, but overall this was a beautiful raw story.

I absolutely loved this book. Hearing someone talk about the hardships that come with having a mentally ill family member was cathartic. This story flowed smoothly and really pulled me in. Also thw reader for this has a very soothing voice.

Holy cow! I was not expecting this book to hit me like I did. I have struggled with mental health, just like a lot of people. It was so interesting to be inside the mind of a mother's child and how the mental health of a parent can have such an impact on their children. This was an incredibly well written letter to his mother. It was heartfelt and heartbreaking at the same time. I was in awe. Definitely a must read, especially if you or someone you know struggles with mental health and parenting.

Wow…

This book is told in letter form. It’s about a young man who grew up with a mother who has a mental illness and he didn’t have a great start to life. He suffered an accident at 6 months old and that resulted in him having scars. There could be so many triggers for people in this book. It was so heartbreaking, but it’s beautiful.

Manny writes letters to his mama. As he suffers through her illness. He’s the child who has to take care of his mother, and his siblings. This is an emotional read. There were a few times that I had to stop.

I really liked the narrator, and I got lost a few times just listening to his voice. He really expressed emotion throughout the story. It’s truly a beautiful, but tragic story. As Manny grows up he talks about his family, love and loss. We follow Manny through so many things for 20 years. It’s a powerful story that I enjoyed a lot.

Thank you so much netgalley for the advanced copy.
#ListenMama #Netgalley

I was given an advance audiobook in exchange for an honest review. This audiobook was hard to be able to listen to for any length of time, it is the memoir of one young man’s recollection of his childhood and life in general. It was so sad to listen to how he was expected to exist. He was severely burned as a child and it deformed his face so bad that he required several rounds of surgery, kids continued to bully him, his entire life,. His mom was never home, never knew his father , has been living with grandma. Manny will always feel the responsibility of taking care of his siblings. His mom spends most of her time going in and out of a mental hospital. She is bipolar, has schizophrenia’s. It is actually heart wrenching to listen to this memoir and to hear of the life Manny remembers as his childhood. In life he seemed to always take the easy way out. Put in little, to no, effort. He kept doing the same thing and expected a different outcome. Had many jobs, lost them all. quit looking. Found someone online that must have been as desperate as him. This has to be one of the saddest audiobooks I hav encountered. You cannot listen to this, if you are looking for a lighthearted fun listen. There is nothing fun or happy can be found in this audiobook. It does show someone who wants better for himself and family but keeps being knocked down. I want to thank #NetGalley the publisher and author, #M.S.P.Williams for giving me the opportunity to review this audiobook memoir.. With a second thought, I have raised my opinion to four stars.

Wow. Full of Raw Emotion

4.5 out of 5 stars

Listen Mama is one of those titles that I wouldn’t normally pick up without knowing much about it. Sadly, that’s one of the problems that a memoir has. One way they can draw you in (outside of being a celebrity) is through the cover.

I have to say that at first glance, this cover grabbed my attention — but I wasn’t sure why. I can feel the artist trying to tell me something. And I think that’s what you’re me to it. It has this sentence that there’s so much more going on below the surface. I just felt like I needed to know Manny’s story just from the cover alone. Another way that a memoir will get some traction is to be nominated for an award… and an Audie is probably the creme de la creme of those. Knowing that it was up it in the memoir category really made picking this one up easy.

Diving into it, I was surprised at the amount of emotion and raw… feeling that Williams was able to get out of it. Not just from their journey but the tone of the book. That’s hard to do.

I am in no way want to take away from the story that Williams is telling here but dealing with mental health and family is one of the most difficult and frustrating things that anybody can deal with. I think he was able to talk about all of the difficulties that come with it and tell a unique story of his life in a way that made this a very interesting story to listen to.

Overall I enjoyed listening to this book on audio, the performance was excellent. And definitely took a book that was already very good and made it even better. I love when a narrator is able to do that. And it doesn’t happen all the time. It’s pretty easy to see where this book was nominated for an Audie.

I think JD Jackson’s style matched perfectly with Williams’ ability to tell a story. A true story of that. It’s nice when an author and a narrator are able to mesh like this and tell an even better version of the original story.

I’m really glad that I picked this one up and if you’re looking for a tail that’s almost unbelievable but you also know it’s true definitely check this one out.

Thank you to Netgalley and he publisher for approving me for this arc

The concept of this book is beautiful, I love that it is written to their mum which is so moving. I love the personal aspect and I felt like I really resonated with this book

A heart breaking memoir about the author's childhood spent coping with a mentally ill mother and lots of young siblings. Written in epistolary form, the memoir was at times frustrating when you're following Manny go out of his way for his family and trust his mother again only to get hurt, again.
I tried looking up the author but couldn't find anything about him; it would've probably been better to get to learn a little bit about the author.

trigger warnings (I may be missing some things as I didn't take notes while reading the audiobook. Most of these are quick mentions except for anything dealing with mental illness)
anxiety, bipolar, break up, bullying, conspiracy theories based on hallucinations, cops, custody issues, death, depression, deformity from burning, dental issues, divorce, domestic abuse, drugs, family trauma, food insecurity, guns, hallucinations, hospitalization, infant burn victim, jail, mental illness, mental institution, poverty, predatory cops, prison, racism, schizophrenia, seizures, sexual assault, suicidal ideation, weight loss due to illness

Dear Mama is an autobiographical epistolary novel written by a son to his mentally ill mother. It begins from his youth in the 1990s and progresses through his adulthood in the 2000s. It tackles relationships, loss, family drama and trauma, loneliness, grief, cultural and world-changing events, and the hardships of poverty.

I don't have much to say about this other than I loved it. It's an all too familiar story to me (I was also my younger siblings' caregiver for a while, mentally ill with a mentally ill parent struggling from many of the same things in the book, and eventually had to move away from them) and has made me reflect on my life the past 31 years. It's reality, our reality, and it's written out beautifully. One day I'll have more to say about it, but today I just urge you to read this.

A Young Man's Journey

An intimate soulful look at a young man coming of age in undesirable circumstances. From his disfigurement and surgeries to correct it to his challenges living in a dysfunctional home. His honest and heartfelt letters to him mother in an institution from Mental Illness are so honest and so sad. A young man yearning for his mother, for his life and for things to be different, to be normal.

I can sense his frustration with the situation, his hurt from rejections and his love for his mother all at the same time. Mental confusion and those heart breaking letters to his mother.

It was sad watching Manny suffer from depression and attempted suicide and finally coming to grips with life. He had a hard row to how and the cards were stacked against him from the beginning. This was definitely a story that pulls at the heart strings.

I am glad I listened to the audio book and Manny's story. The narration was done remarkably well and the story was sad with a bit of humor and love mixed in together. I think that it was very well written.

Thanks to M.S.P. Williams for sharing his story and doing a wonderful job of narrating it, to Souls Take Flight for publishing it and to NetGalley for making it available to me.

(I listened to the audiobook) Since this book is a memoirs I tried searching who M.S.P Williams is but I could only find references to this book.
The very first thing that hit me was the very heavy accent (I don't know where its from but I couldn't understand it), I'm bilingual and English its not my first language and I feel like authors don't always have that in mind when selecting a narrator for the audiobook.
I wasn't able to listen past the first chapter so have that in mind when reading this review.
I'm a very sentimental person and recently lost a parent so I really couldn't get through this book, like I said not even the first chapter. I just know I would cry my eyes out if I continued.
Its a collection of letters the author wrote to his mentally ill mother who is hospitalized in a mental clinic, just with that I started crying so hard, I'm sure there was more than just that, probably him explaining his whole life to her, but I just couldn't.