While there is certainly no dearth of literature surrounding the experience of motherhood and exploring the relationship between mothers and their children, Jessamine Chan has chosen to go in a unique direction with her debut novel, The School for Good Mothers, which tackles motherhood through a dystopian lens. The novel’s protagonist is Frida Liu, a 39 year old mother raising her 18 month old daughter Harriet on her own, after her husband leaves her for a much younger pilates instructor. Frida is unmoored when her husband leaves: she is stuck in Philadelphia where her husband moved the family for his work, and she is saddled with a dull but demanding full time job at the University of Pennsylvania while simultaneously being forced to raise her young daughter on her own. In a moment of weakness brought on by fatigue, Frida leaves her daughter all alone at the house for two hours just to escape for a bit, when her neighbors call the police and report Frida for neglect. Frida is hauled into police custody, and unsuccessfully pleads her case to the authorities, who see evidence of her unfitness as a mother everywhere. They question Frida’s love for her daughter, blame her for being a stereotypical cold Asian mother, but also for not being culturally conscious enough to teach her daughter Mandarin, and seem to find issue with virtually every aspect of Frida’s identity.
This is when authorities tell Frida that they have a new program that would be a great fit for her, a sort of correctional program where “bad mothers” like herself can train for a year, and if they complete the course successfully, win back the right to custody of their kids. Frida agrees to participate in the program, as it is presented to her as the only avenue to ever having custody of Harriet again in the future. So she hands over Harriet to her ex-husband, and travels to the campus of an abandoned liberal arts college, which has been converted into a rehab facility for mothers in the same predicament as Frida: mothers who left their children alone for some time, failed drug tests, or who “coddled” their children too much. Frida immediately notices that she is the only Asian woman in the program, which is mostly populated by black and brown women. Frida also notices the racial and class tensions at play, as most of the women who surround her are mothers from severely under-resourced communities, some are teen moms, many are poor, and all differ in appearance from the traditional perfect mother that society holds up as a beacon of benevolence and selflessness enabled by immense resources.
The school is a sort of women’s prison: the mothers are given matching uniforms, the campus is surrounded by an electrified fence, and surveillance and control is a constant in their lives. Soon after their arrival, the mothers are split into groups based upon the age group of their children, and then each mother is given her own robotic child, a crude AI-powered representation of their real children, equipped with cameras to tape the mother’s every interaction. These dolls are used for training the mothers, who undergo a series of courses on how to handle different issues with their doll children, like how to manage anger, how to talk “motherese” (a gentle but firm language that mothers should always use for their children), and how to treat their children’s wounds, etc. The courses are extremely rigorous and the instructors are quite tough, remonstrating the mothers for any missteps, and submitting them to constant evaluation. Frida is at first ambivalent about her doll and worn down by the conditions at the school, but begins to form an attachment with this robotic representation of her daughter, feeling real sympathy for this creature whose entire existence is contrived and who will never have a normal life.
Frida has varying success in her courses, struggling sometimes to complete the evaluations without error, but other times excelling with the help of her doll child. In a moment of frustration, Frida pinches her doll, when she is forced to once again recite the phrase that the mothers recite in group therapy, “I am a narcissist. I am a danger to my child.” The community element of the school is a fascinating part of Frida’s experience, as she begins forming relationships with the women around her, who become crucial resources for one another. While there is lots of infighting within the community, many of the mothers, including Frida, come to rely on the relationships they’ve built with the women in the same troubling circumstances as them for sustenance. The novel is a testament to the survival instincts of these women, who manage to make a life for themselves despite the constant threat of surveillance and punishment that comes with the prison-like atmosphere.
Chan has managed to craft a propulsive and anxiety-filled narrative that touches upon the extremely complicated relationship that society has with motherhood, and lays bare many of the daily traumas of trying to integrate motherhood into one’s identity as a person. The book definitely has the feel of a Kazuo Ishiguro or Margaret Atwood novel, where dystopian sci-fi elements expose deeply human truths and contemporary anxieties about the future of humankind. I have no doubt that audiences will have varied reactions to this one, as Chan purposely asks her reader to at once have sympathy for Frida but also understand her complications and weaknesses. This is a promising debut that offers a fantastic addition to the canon of literature about the complex nature of motherhood and society.