I always found it hard to review or rate a persons memoir. This was full of so much emotions. Written as forms of letters to the author’s mentally ill mother desperately needing her love.
Manny taking care of his mama and his siblings. Battling with his own mental health issues in his teen years, depression and suicide attempts but finally gathering the strength he had to withstand everything ever since he was young and trying to figure out life. This was definitely a very powerful book with a lot of raw emotions and more often really hard to handle for the reader. I would only recommend this book to anyone who is aware that this is an extremely sensitive read in most parts and choose to read it.

The memoir in this book is told through the young man's letters to his mentally ill mother from his adolescence through adulthood. We learn about the author's life as he grows up and tries to make sense of what life has given him through these letters.

If you are looking for a story that has elements such as faith, love, redemption, heartache, and happiness, then you should read this book. There are a few spots throughout the book that really light a fire in your soul. My only criticism is that it was not nearly as good as it could have been. There was a huge amount of potential work to be done. For instance, with the exception of the final two chapters, I never had an emotional connection to Manny's story, despite my admiration for his perseverance and ambition.

The novel doesn't offer readers enough time to get to know different individuals because the chapters are written in the form of letters. Additionally, we don't learn much about his interactions with his mother when he was an adolescent because the letters appear to begin after she had been admitted to a mental health facility. I think I would have felt a stronger sense of connection if I had known more about his early years.

It's hard to say if this was a good read because of the subject matter focusing on mental health. It's a very powerful series of letters and the authors devotion to his family is very honest and moving. I liked the use of letters to depict the years passing and the change in perspective when growing up. However, I found the writing style a bit choppy and confusing with no real depth at times. The last letter from his mother was heartbreaking.

This book was at its most potent best when it dealt with the mother's mental illness and the subsequent impact on the author's childhood and youth. There were digressions, especially later in the book that dragged on somewhat, but overall it is a powerful memoir of how he very slowly managed to loosen the shackles of his mother's devastating condition to forge an independent life for himself.

In this book, everything is told through letters.

It's about a guy who grew up with a mental illness mother and he didn't have a great start in life. He got scars from an accident when he was 6 months old. This book might trigger a lot of people. It's so beautiful, but it's heartbreaking.

Manny writes letters to his mom. She's sick, and he's suffering too. He's the one who has to look after his mom and his siblings. It's a tough read. I had to pause a few times.

This is a beautiful, but tragic story. As he grows up, Manny talks about his family, love, and loss. Manny goes through a lot over the course of 20 years.It's a really powerful story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
This coming-of-age memoir shows how this young boy had to grow up too fast and learned to be his mother's caretaker when she wasn't in the hospital.
I am not a fan of the writing style and the flow was choppy.

Listen Mama
by M.S.P. Williams
Pub Date 01 Jan 2021
Souls Take Flight, Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles
Biographies & Memoirs | New Adult | Teens & YA



I am reviewing a copy of Listen Mama through Souls Take Flight, Independent Book Publishers Association and Netgalley:




Told through a series of heart-breaking and poignant letters, come explore the 20-year journey of a child longing for the love of his mentally ill mother while facing seemingly insurmountable odds.



In Listen Mama we witness Manny's transformation in this coming of age story of a forgotten and disfigured child, born into spirit-crushing poverty in Houston, Texas, and thrust into adulthood all too soon. Crying out to the world for understanding and forgiveness, Manny battles the silent and treacherous enemy of mental illness in his mother's often erratic and sometimes terrifying behavior as he ultimately becomes her caretaker and guardian while also parenting his four younger siblings.



If you’re looking for a story of loss, faith, love, and redemption that is guaranteed to bring forth both tears and laughter, heartache and happiness, as it captures your imagination, ignites your soul, and soon has you resisting to pause, breathlessly waiting to discover what happens next, then I highly recommend Listen Mama.



I give Listen Mama five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

Listen Mama is an incredibly powerful tale of a young man coming to terms with his mother's mental illness, and learning that it's not his responsibility to take care of her or his siblings. The book was at times tough to read, just because of the subject matter, but Manny's devotion to his family will pull at your heartstring's and you can't help but root for him to find his way in the world.

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.

The story is deeply moving and heartfelt; we get to grow with the protagonist, and I think that is the book's biggest strength. However, I can't ignore how difficult it was for me to keep up or adjust to the writing style. This may be a problem on my end, but it did make reading it feel a bit muddled up for me and taint my experience.