Powerful, poetic meditations on motherhood, sisterhood, spirituality, solidarity, displacement/gentrification, racism, and sexism. My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter is poet Aja Monet’s ode to mothers, daughters, and sisters—the tiny gods who fight to change the world. Textured with the sights and sounds of growing up in East New York in the nineties, to school on the South Side of Chicago, all the way to the olive groves of Palestine, these stunning poems tackle racism, sexism, genocide, displacement, heartbreak, and grief, but also love, motherhood, spirituality, and Black joy.

Selected praise for My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter:

“Thank you, Aja Monet." —Ava Duvernay

“Stunning and evocative... fierce and revolutionary.” —Publishers Weekly Starred Review

“A testament to the brilliance of Black women, from the South Side of Chicago and beyond.”—Bitch Magazine