my mother is a mixed metaphor

Playful, moving and inventive poems that describe an ever-evolving love story between mother and daughter. Gupta is an astoundingly talented new poetic voice. Wholehearted and multifaceted, this is a glorious collection that celebrates the multitude of ways mother-daughter love can be expressed.

—Sophie Howarth, author of Everyday Wonder and co-founder of The School of Life

In my mother is a mixed metaphor, Shivani Gupta refuses the tidy immigrant daughter narrative. Through turmeric-stained memories and long-distance voice notes, Gupta writes with startling specificity—moving between wit and wound—about loving her mother fiercely while choosing a life thousands of miles away. This is brown daughterhood as inquiry, a collection that insists we can be both like and unlike our mothers and still keep “reaching, reaching, reaching.”

—T. De Los Reyes, author of And Yet Held

This collection captures the essence of so many shared experiences between mothers and daughters, the roles we play and how women disappear in their roles. It is also about witnessing your mother being capable of an unbounded life. Most of all, this collection is exceptionally special to me because of who it’s about.

—Anuja Jaiswal, mother, sister, niece, and writer