• One of NPR’s “Nonfiction Books We Love from 2025” • One of Kirkus ’s “Best Nonfiction Books of 2025” • A powerful new voice, telling the American story through three generations of Black mothers. "This searing, poetic memoir covers generations of powerful Black women who raise their children singly and transmit strength by showing up. . . . Bonét writes her own mothering story with brute honesty." —NPR "[A] profound story about all Black women, and about the effects of racism in all Black lives. . . . [O]bservant, thoughtful and poetic, in the best sense. [Bonét’s] account of both her family history and the lives of her tributaries show off her gifts to the fullest." — The New York Times Sasha Bonét grew up in 1990s Houston, worlds removed from the Louisiana cotton plantation that raised her grandmother, Betty Jean, and the Texas bayous that shaped Sasha’s mother, Connie. And though each generation did better, materially, than the last, all of them carried the complex legacy of Black American motherhood with its origins in slavery. All of them knew that the hands used to comb and braid hair, shell pecans, and massage weary muscles were the very hands used to whip children into submission. When she had her own daughter, Sofia, Bonét was determined to interrupt this tradition. She brought Sofia to New York and set off on a journey—not only up and down the tributaries of her bloodline but also into the lives of Black women in history and literature—Betty Davis, Recy Taylor, and Iberia Hampton among them—to understand both the love and pain they passed on to their children and to create a way of mothering that honors the legacy but abandons the violence that shaped it. The Waterbearers is a dazzling and transformative work of American storytelling that reimagines not just how we think of Black women, but how we think of ourselves—as individuals, parents, communities, and a country. • One of NPR’s “Nonfiction Books We Love from 2025” • One of Kirkus ’s “Best Nonfiction Books of 2025” • A most anticipated book by Washington Post , Vanity Fair , The Root , and Millions • Featured in Debutiful ’s “24 debut books to discover in September 2025” and the Southern Review of Books’ “The Best Southern Books of September 2025” • "This searing, poetic memoir covers generations of powerful Black women who raise their children singly and transmit strength by showing up. . . . Bonét writes her own mothering story with brute honesty." —NPR "[A] profound story about all Black women, and about the effects of racism in all Black lives. . . . [O]bservant, thoughtful and poetic, in the best sense. [Bonét’s] account of both her family history and the lives of her tributaries show off her gifts to the fullest." — The New York Times " The Waterbearers is one of the most beautiful and truthful books I’ve ever read. Bonét tells the whole history of this country through the relationships of and between Black mothers and daughters. It is as intimate and tender as it is vast and stormy. Unforgettable." —Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America "Sasha Bonét’s The Waterbearers is a bold new entry in the canon of literature about Black motherhood. With great intention and beauty, Bonét explores what it means to care for others and for oneself in the matrix of race, class and gender that powers American culture. A beautiful counternarrative to the ways motherhood—and Black motherhood specifically—are usually imagined in American literature, this is an intricately constructed sonnet on the inherent contradictions in mothering another person." —Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of Libertie "Sasha Bonét’s tale is a tale of evolution and hope—a moving forward while looking back at generations of women who have sought something better for themselves, their families, and, ultimately, the worlds that sought to define them. I have been waiting to read this story for a very long time." —Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of White Girls "At once propulsive and tender, Sasha Bonét’s The Waterbearers is an epic love song and a remarkable ballad of generations. By the end of this book, I knew I held in my hands a new American classic, and that I would never forget this family, whose story is the story of America, and that the women in these pages had forever deepened my understanding of motherhood, history, homecoming, and the revolutionary potential of love." —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams " The Waterbearers is magnificent in its nimble agility. People are elevated to wonders, if that is still possible, and Sasha Bonét dances on our hearts in this classic creation of will and wit. Electrifying. Wow." —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir " The Waterbearers is an entrancing, poetic ode to Black women and mothers and the things we pass from generation to generation. Sasha Bonét invites us into an expansive, genre-bending narrative that sprawls a