The Waterbearers is one of those books that stays with you long after you finish the last page. Sasha Bonét tells the story of three generations of Black women; her grandmother, her mother, and herself and she writes with such honesty and power, that it felt like sitting down to listen to a family history that’s both deeply personal and universally important.

The book starts with her grandmother, Betty Jean, who raised eleven kids on her own in Texas after years spent picking cotton in Louisiana. Her strength and independence are honestly jaw dropping. Then there’s Mama Connie, Bonét’s mother, who tried to break away from her past but ended up repeating some of the same patterns. And finally, there’s Sasha herself, who is trying to make sense of it all while raising her own daughter and figuring out what kind of mother she wants to be.

Bonét’s writing is gorgeous. It is poetic without being overly flowery, and full of heart. The prose is really beautiful! She also brings in stories of iconic Black women like Nina Simone, Audre Lorde, and Oprah, showing how their lives connect to her own and the women in her family. It’s like a love letter to Black motherhood, resilience, and the way we carry our histories, sometimes without even realizing it.

This book isn’t just about one family, but about legacy, survival, and how women keep going, even when the world expects them to break. If you love memoirs that feel raw, beautiful, and important, you’ll want to add this to your list. I’ll definitely be thinking about this one for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley, Sasha Bonét, and Knopf for the eARC of this book.

"The Waterbearers" is author Sasha Bonét's personal exploration of her lineage and upbringing, borne on the shoulders of the women in her family. It's part memoir, part history, and includes Bonét's own musings and thoughts on present day events and phenomenon.

While the writing isn't chronological, Bonét shares details of her childhood, and the lack of presence of any male figure - for her, her mother Connie was her sole guardian and parent. She also goes into detail about her grandmother Betty Jean, a fiercely strong woman who spent most of her years in Louisiana picking cotton before moving to Texas to raise her family, almost single-handedly. And for her daughter Connie, despite her best attempts to separate herself from her mother's shadow, she too became a single mother, but raised her daughter with as much love and direction that she could. She pulls as well from strong black female figures in the present, highlighting the many ways these women continue to push forward for all black women, and the extent of weight they bear on their shoulders.

While I found Bonét's writing complex and captivating, I struggled with this novel as a whole. The chapters weren't organized in a way that I could easily follow, and the skips in time periods as well as certain repeated events or themes were hard to follow. I was given what I imagine was a very early ARC of this book as well, so there's a number of issues with the spelling and grammar ("ff" appears to be removed from any and all words, line breaks that occur in the middle of words, sentences missing key words and years (possibly to be filled later with more research), etc. that detracted from the reading experience as a whole.